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Spotting the sick child - Ffion Davies
Coda Change
English - March 12, 2017 20:00 - 25 minutes - 23.4 MB - ★★★★★ - 77 ratingsMedicine Health & Fitness Science coda care covid19 harris icu carley codachange conference coronavirus critical Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Reflecting on 26 years of frontline practice in paediatric emergency care: while there’s no substitute for knowledge and experience, I can see some common themes to failing to spot a sick child. By sick, I mean injuries and illness that need hospital attention or hospitalisation. This talk tries to draw from all those errors I’ve both made and seen, into a couple of easy-to-apply mantras.
Physiology matters. It really does. Scrutinising a full set of observations/vitals (in the context of the child’s age) will help avoid our feared crime: discharging a sick child. And how to deal with fever, as a confounding factor.
Psychology matters. It really does. Talks on PEM are always popular because as EM physicians, we’re insecure about mismanaging a child. Are children precious? Are adults just big children? Therein lies the problem. Less knowledge, less experience, less confidence? Yes? Then there's less Type 1 thinking.
We’ll talk about the risks in needing to rely more upon Type 2 thinking. How to deal with the time-poor resuscitation situation. How to avoid denial. What makes some staff be over-confident with children (hint - type 2 thinking is hard work!). What stops us applying our usual filters (eg risk stratification).
Finally, I can signpost more specific help with developing your PEM skills, which can be found at www.spottingthesickchild.com , an eLearning package containing hours of videos of real-life cases, endorsed by the NHS in the UK, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N35J3NLJW_s , a 10-minute podcast also endorsed by the NHS.