Hospital emergency rooms nationwide have made major strides in the quality of pediatric care in recent years, according to a study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics.

More than 90 percent of emergency departments are now staffed and equipped to treat children, which is a vast improvement from 2001, when national guidelines were first introduced, according to the study led by a researcher at Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Carson.

“Our findings are very exciting,” said Marianne Gausche-Hill, the study’s author, who has been working to improve child emergency care since 1998. “The number of equipment available has improved significantly. The barriers we identified are the cost of training and the availability of certain resources.”

The study, titled “A National Assessment of Pediatric Readiness of Emergency Departments,” found that hospital emergency rooms have, on average, taken big steps in being prepared to treat kids. Of the 4,149 hospitals that responded, representing 24 million annual child emergency-room visits, 69.4 percent reported treating less than 14 children per day.EP-150419708

The median weighted pediatric readiness score of all respondents was 68.9, which represents a solid improvement from previous years, researchers said.

Gausche-Hill was the first emergency physician to become board certified in pediatrics in 1992, when it was an emerging specialty.

“The needs of children weren’t known because physicians were focused on emergencies like cardiac arrest. I started to identify gaps in the training of paramedics and residents going into emergency medicine. There was a lot to do to sort out what the best methods were. Since 1998, we’ve been working collaboratively.” -Marianne Gausche-Hill said

Strong support for the project came from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the Emergency Nurses Association. The coalition managed to quickly assess what was needed in emergency departments because of overwhelming support for the research, Gausche-Hill said.

But early assessments of emergency department readiness were not comprehensive and showed relatively poor preparedness to treat children with medical emergencies, according to the study. Pediatric emergency care guidelines were updated in 2009, and a pilot program began in California to upgrade emergency rooms. A coalition of groups worked together to learn what resources were lacking at hospitals and how to ensure they are provided. By 2011, the effort was ready to go national.

Read the full article at the Daily Breeze

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