Article
Randomised controlled trial assessing the impact of increasing
information to health visitors about children's injuries
D Kendricka, A Pritchardb, J Clokec, M Barleyc
a Division of General
Practice, Tower Building, Floor 13, University Park, Nottingham
NG7 2RD, UK, b The
Newthorpe Medical Centre, Chewton Street, Eastwood, Nottingham
NG16 3HB, UK, c Accident
and Emergency Department, Queens Medical Centre, Clifton Boulevard,
Nottingham NG7 2UH, UK
Correspondence to: Dr Kendrick denise.kendrick{at}nottingham.ac.uk
Accepted 20 July 2001
AIMS
To assess the effect on health
visitor action of providing community health visitors with information
on all injury attendances in children under 5 attending an accident and
emergency (A&E) department and of providing additional information
about each injury.
METHODSChildren under 5 years
attending the A&E department at Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham
between October 1998 and April 1999 were studied, using a randomised
controlled trial with a 2×2 factorial design. All attendances or
selected attendances (all children under 1, burns and scalds,
poisonings, head injuries, and repeat attendances in preceding six
months) were notified. Provision of standard (diagnosis, circumstances
surrounding injury, and disposal) or additional information (standard
information plus place of injury, number of A&E attendances for injury
in previous year, and any information recorded about safety equipment)
was noted.
RESULTSMany notifications (56%)
do not result in any action. Health visitors were nearly twice as
likely to take action of some kind and three times as likely to
undertake a home visit on receipt of notifications for selected
attendances than on those for all attendances. A greater number of
actions per notification were taken on receipt of information about
selected attendances. Providing additional information had little
effect on the action taken.
CONCLUSIONSA selective policy for
notifying community health visitors of child injury attendances at A&E
results in a greater proportion of attendances in which the health
visitor takes action and in a greater number of actions per attendance
being taken. The utility of notifying all injury attendances is
questionable, as many do not result in any action.
Keywords: health visitor; injury; A&E
© 2001 by Archives of Disease in Childhood
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
-
Nelson, C. S., Tandon, S. D., Duggan, A. K., Serwint, J. R.
(2009). Communication Between Key Stakeholders Within a Medical Home: A Qualitative Study. CLIN PEDIATR
48: 252-262
[Abstract]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
- Citation Map
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in ADC Online
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
-
Clinical trials (epidemiology)
-
Child health
-
Poisoning
-
Occupational and environmental medicine
-
Trauma
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
