Initial Pediatric Assessment in the Emergency Room

Abstract

In pediatrics, the priority goals of emergency medicine are: recognize a child with a life-threatening condition and establish priorities for care. In some aspects, pediatric assessment is difficult because it requires knowledge of normal and abnormal child development and specific skills in assessing patients. The classic assessment has the purpose of establishing a specific diagnosis, which can be time consuming in a situation where lack of optimization can have life or death consequences. Initial assessment is a process different from diagnosis; the primary objective of the former is to identify anatomic and physiological abnormalities, in order to assess the patient’s severity and determine the promptitude and intensity of initial treatment. In this phase, examining room and laboratory studies are not decisive components. General, or specific, treatment focuses on restoring bodily and physiological homeostasis, in other words to prevent evolution to respiratory failure, shock, or cardiopulmonary insufficiency. It is not the time to make a specific diagnosis.

Keywords

• emergency
• evaluation
• assessment