Introduction: Nearly 60,000 children receive emergency services each year due to accidental medication ingestion. Since families regularly receive verbal anticipatory guidance about locking up medications during pediatric well child visits, primary care clinics are an opportune place to distribute lock boxes to families who need them. ETSU Pediatrics is an interprofessional outpatient clinic that serves a population with many social, medical, and psychological needs. ETSU Pediatrics partnered with a local non-profit organization to provide medication lock boxes free to charge to families who need one. However, it was not known whether more families would endorse a need for a lock box in response to a systematic effort to screen for this need. We hypothesized that more medication lock boxes would be administered if families were given a written screener asking explicitly about their need for a lock box. Method:ETSU Pediatrics added the question “To increase child safety, is your household in need of a lockbox for medications?” to an existing social determinants of health screener that is given annually to each patient during their well child visit. Social work students imbedded in the clinic gave out lock boxes to families who endorsed a need. Frequency counts of the number of medication lock boxes given out were compared 6 months before and after the initiation of the screener. Results: Out of the 2,018 well child visits that occurred in the 6 months after screener initiation, 5.5% (111) of families endorsed a need for a medication lock box. Of those 106 were given a lock box. This was a substantial increase in demand for lock boxes compared to the 6 months prior to screener initiation in which only 16 lock boxes were given out. Conclusions: Systematic screening for medication lock box need resulted in more lock boxes being administered to families over a 6-month period, compared to care as usual. An embedded interprofessional student team helped facilitate this process. These results show promise for other healthcare organizations aimed at reducing accidental medication ingestions in children.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ETSU/oai:dc.etsu.edu:asrf-1441 |
| Date | 12 April 2019 |
| Creators | Greasamar, Emily, Hall, Taylor, Pamfill, Samantha, Robert, Tolliver M., PhD, Thibeault, Deborah, DSW, LCSW |
| Publisher | Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University |
| Source Sets | East Tennessee State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Appalachian Student Research Forum |
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