Pediatrics
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A central focus of emergency medical services for children is the critically injured child, whose potential for recovery is great. Yet trauma remains the leading cause of mortality and morbidity among American children 1-14 years of age. Much unnecessary death and disability can be avoided through aggressive professional and public education in pediatric advanced life support and injury prevention. As the primary-care physician of the critically injured child, the surgeon plays a leading role in ensuring that trauma and emergency medical services systems are optimally prepared to meet the dual challenges of providing optimal pediatric trauma care and obviating the need for such treatment through all means possible.
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Registered nurses are the single largest group of health care providers in the United States. Their role in emergency medical services for children and approaches to implementation of the Institute of Medicine recommendations as they relate to nursing care are discussed.
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Research is the key to future improvements in emergency medical services for children (EMS-C). Ultimately these improvements should result in better prevention of childhood emergencies and better outcomes for children who experience emergency illness or injury. Research in EMS-C can be descriptive of the system and its users or focused on specific clinical or basic scientific questions. ⋯ Maturity of the subspecialty of emergency medicine will be indicated by the development of basic science research and epidemiology by physicians with clinical interests in emergency medicine. The most exciting discoveries are likely to come in areas that we have not yet imagined. Rapid development of meaningful research will require massively increased funding to support both the research itself and the training of future scientists to work in pediatric emergency medicine.