Paediatric History Taking Tip
A reminder to emphasise the importance of history taking
Louise Sopher is a Paramedic, Resuscitation Practitioner, and Resuscitation Council ALS Instructor based in Hertfordshire. She has been a registered Paramedic for over 5 years. She is the founder of Article 999.
A reminder to emphasise the importance of history taking
A useful 'nice to know' fast fact. Something to bear in mind during reflection on, or even during the history taking of teenage patients?
An interesting & somewhat heartbreaking statistic concerning children in the UK.
The Red Book is a useful document to take to hospital with a child and their parent(s) (Newell & Darling, 2014: 9).
Another set of Fast Facts, this time from Newell & Darling (2014) about paediatrics at 7 years old. Useful 'nice to knows' during history taking?
Today, we bring you an incredibly useful alternative to the Wong-Baker FACES pain scale (Wong-Baker Faces, 2016), the 'highly unofficial LEGO Pain Assessment Chart' by Life of Dad (Moles, 2014).
This post is a fast fact on some of the health experiences your patients may have had by the time they are 5. A 'nice to know' that may be useful to bear in mind during history taking.
Depending on where an object settles, the patient might have symptoms instantly or days after foreign body inhalation. A croupy cough might not be croup. An infection might not be a simple chest infection. Consider adding these questions to your history taking.
Sometimes, children might present with pyrexia and symptoms that don't suggest they have a chest infection. Don't rule out pneumonia in a poorly child who isn't complaining of chesty symptoms - they may have it.
According to Shaw et al's study (2017), patients whose conditions were deemed more serious in hospital had arrived with higher NEWS scores. The score for each patient was created from prehospital observations & so could be used to predict patient risk.