Children in Connecticut have been dying of abuse or neglect at an alarming rate over the last 18 months — pushing officials to look for ways to identify and act on less-serious injuries earlier in the lives of at-risk children.
One effort would make child-abuse doctors at the state’s two major children’s hospitals available to work around the clock with investigators at the statewide abuse hotline, and also with smaller hospitals, to better evaluate injuries that could foreshadow major abuse.
The expanded program “would cover the rest of the clock, 24/7, with robust data collection that will tell us, ‘Did our consultation help? Did it change anything?’” said [Dr. Nina] Livingston [medical director of the Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect program at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford].
Dr. John Leventhal, who runs the child-abuse program at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital, said part of the mission of the on-call team will be to help medical professionals evaluate what caregivers are telling them about a child’s injury.
“The ‘sentinel injury’ is a very helpful concept, but lies by caregivers can make it complicated,” said Leventhal.
He said that not all pediatricians are trained in recognizing abusive injuries, and that child-abuse identification and treatment became a pediatric sub-specialty only in 2009
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-child-fatality-injuries-0628-20140628,0,6993827.story
Comments (0)