Tuesday, November 21, 2006
The Pediatric ER: The Right Fit for Little Ones
Imagine being three feet tall, having a fever of 102, feeling really bad, and sitting in a large, strange waiting room filled with big people who are sick and in pain.
Fortunately, this is not the scenario in Pensacola, where there’s a special place little ones can go when they need emergency care – Sacred Heart Hospital’s Pediatric Emergency Room on Ninth Avenue. Here, Garfield keeps track of the time, sea creatures float by in a beautiful mural, and X-rays come with colorful stickers.
Open 24 hours a day, Sacred Heart’s Level II Emergency/Trauma Center is home to this nine-bed Pediatric Emergency Room. (The Pediatric ER typically closes for a short period in the early hours, but children still can obtain treatment as there are physicians and nurses in the main ER who are trained to treat children as well.)
Sacred Heart is the region’s only Trauma Center equipped and staffed to treat both adults and children. Services include the AIRHeart air ambulance service, which deploys to emergency medical situations across the region.
“An adult ER can be a scary place to a child,” said Dr. Gary Pablo, medical director of Sacred Heart’s Emergency/Trauma Center who is also board certified in pediatric emergency medicine. “There are bad traumas and ambulances coming and going. The atmosphere can be tense. The pediatric ER is much more sedate and kid-friendly. For a sick child, it’s a physically and emotionally better place to be.”
Sacred Heart’s pediatric ER staff members are specially trained and experienced in treating children for everything from viruses to broken bones to trauma. “You’re not going to approach a 3-year-old with a fever in the same way you would approach a 70-year-old person,” said Dr. Pablo. “When your staff members specialize in caring for children and do that on a daily basis, you get better patient outcomes.”
An average of 1,392 patients per month are seen in the pediatric ER, or about 46 a day. Staff includes physicians who are board certified in pediatric emergency medicine and others who are board-certified pediatricians.
In addition, physicians who are training in pediatrics through Sacred Heart’s residency program affiliated with FSU’s College of Medicine see patients under the supervision of board-certified ER physicians. All nurses in this area also have specialized training in emergency care of children.
Caring for kids demands a high level of compassion, according to Dr. Pablo. For example, experienced nurses are trained to insert an IV needle into a little arm without causing pain. Sometimes they numb the area to help take the sting out of the needle. The pediatric ER stocks also stocks smaller, appropriately sized IVs, splints, catheters, and endotracheal tubes.
Many injuries seen in the pediatric ER can be avoided, according to Dr. Pablo, who urges parents to make sure their children are wearing safety helmets while rollerblading, skateboarding and biking.
“I have seen so many injuries in children that could have been prevented – drowning, for example, and traumas like brain injuries because the child was in a car accident and wasn’t secured in an appropriate child-safety seat,” he said. “A child can even drown in a bucket of rainwater that is left out in the backyard.”
Want to learn more about preventing injuries in infants and children? Sacred Heart’s website at www.sacred-heart.org offers an online health library that provides a wealth of safety information. This library also contains a wide variety of children’s health articles written at reading levels for children and teenagers.
For more information about Sacred Heart’s pediatric ER, please call (850) 416-7000.
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