Pediatric and emergency care organizations have updated their joint guidance for emergency departments preparing to care for kids, with new recommendations around pediatric quality measures, universal suicide screening in teens and more.
Published Tuesday across the organizations’ respective journals, the new joint policy statement and technical report update pediatric readiness recommendations last given in 2018. The groups, in accompanying releases citing a 2024 study, said high adherence to the practices could save the lives of more than 2,100 children nationwide.
“More than 80% of children who come to an emergency department go to a local community hospital, not a children’s hospital,” Kate Remick, M.D., lead author of the statement and an associate chair at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School, said in a release. “Every emergency department should be fully prepared for kids, no matter how often they see them. These recommendations save lives.”
Authors of the joint statement noted that about 18% of the country’s 140 million ED visits in 2021 were among children younger than 15 years and that an ED’s pediatric readiness has been tied to a fourfold reduction in mortality risk for critically ill children and a nearly twofold reduction for injured children.
The joint statement’s recommendations are intended for all the nation’s EDs regardless of whether they have access to high-level resources and are accompanied by a “Pediatric Readiness Checklist” for EDs.
They were developed by experts from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Emergency Physicians, the Emergency Nurses Association and the American College of Surgeons, the lattermost of which was not a contributor to the 2018 version. Its authors considered data from national assessments of pediatric readiness and related peer-reviewed, published research.
Similar to prior iterations, the new recommendations highlight the value of appointing nurse and physician pediatric emergency care coordinators to lead an ED’s readiness efforts. The update also places a heavier focus on clinical practice guidelines and decision support tools for common conditions that are specific to young patients and reinforces the importance of immediate access to pediatric resuscitation carts as well as medication dosage tools for faster care.
Further, the recommendations outline pediatric quality measures and calls for multidisciplinary review of all pediatric deaths and adverse events. The update also digs deeper on pediatric mental health and recommends EDs conduct assessments and screening for issues like food insecurity and human trafficking among patients.
The statement’s authors noted that coordinating care across integrated health systems “may improve pediatric readiness locally, regionally and nationally” and that hospitals with pediatric critical care capabilities could boost regional readiness by sharing their expertise with other community EDs.
The updated recommendations and included Pediatric Readiness Checklist come ahead of a national, multidisciplinary assessment of pediatric emergency capabilities—the National Pediatric Readiness Project, a collaboration the federal government’s Emergency Medical Services for Children Program and other organizations last conducted in 2023. The 100-point assessment is scheduled to open March 3 and provides individual and national screenshots of EDs’ pediatric readiness.