Emergency staff survey on their role in pediatric injury prevention education - A pilot study

A pilot study to survey the attitudes of emergency department (ED) personne l regarding their role in injury prevention education in children and paren ts was conducted at a tertiary care trauma center. The survey consisted of 14 statements, asking staff members their level of agreement (from strongly agree to strongly disagree) on a forced-choice four-point scale. These wer e followed by two questions asking staff members to rank schools, physician 's offices, emergency departments, and public health units on their value i n providing injury prevention information to children and parents. Before t he intervention (an in-service training program on the importance of docume nting the circumstances of injury on a patient's chart), a 50% randomly sel ected sample of ED staff members was asked in May 1997 to complete the surv ey. After the data collection prepilot (4 months later), the remaining 50% was asked in September 1997 to complete the same questionnaire. Administrat ion of the preintervention survey resulted in 53 of 62 surveys being return ed (85%). The postintervention survey was completed by 35 of the 41 staff m embers still eligible (85%), those who were employed in the ED during the e ntire pilot project. There was no statistically significant difference betw een the pre- and post-pilot groups on any demographic characteristics. Staf f members agreed least with the statement that ED physicians and staff memb ers could impact the severity of injuries to children by providing counseli ng to parents (68.1% preintervention and 64.5% postintervention agreement). Of most significance was the fact that a lower percentage of staff members agreed postintervention that almost all injuries to children were avoidabl e. The emergency department,vas the lowest ranked information dissemination venue for both parents and children. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc.