P3A297: Injury Prevention in the Emergency Department

Background: Safe storage practices have been shown to decrease incidence of medication ingestion and firearm related injuries in pediatric patients. This abstract describes successful approaches using different personnel in a busy pediatric emergency department setting to improve safe storage among parents.

Project Description: Various educators (public health student, medical student, full time social service providers) were used in the emergency department to assess feasibility of ED as site for intervention and education, sustainability of various educators and impact of education and equipment on parental behaviors.

Discussion: The initial stage of this project used a public health student as educator and resulted in 98% enrollment with 363 families receiving education and 843 total children impacted and increased reported correct storage for meds (9% to 85%) and firearms (45% to 67%). The second stage used a medical student as educator and resulted in 93% enrollment with 106 families receiving education and 199 children impacted. Both students were time limited when they returned to classwork. The study was refined to utilize medical social workers who are employed within the hospital with follow-up calls by a medical student. This has resulted in 78 families educated (271 children impacted) to date and began in July 2022. Follow up phone calls for those educated by social services (68% follow up rate) resulted in 24% of families utilizing the firearm lock and 72% using the medication box.

Conclusion: The emergency department is an effective location to provide families with education about safe storage of medication and firearms regardless of educator utilized. The project was effective when using students as educators but found this to be unsustainable due to scheduling conflicts and time restraints. The implementation of full-time hospital employees as educators provided a more sustainable model.