If it isn't broken

Minor injuries in children are common.  Quite often, parents will present their children to General Practice, a Minor Injury Unit or an Emergency Department seeking reassurance.  This is often possible without the need for any investigations.  This post will explore some of the general principles of assessing and treating minor injuries in children.  I hope that by understanding some of the subtleties of how children's injuries work you will feel a bit more confident about managing these injuries when appropriate.  Over the next few weeks, there will be a smattering of posts that give specifics about injured body parts.  First, as my science teachers told me, we must return to first principles.

1.  Children injure themselves in different ways to adults

In fact, each part of childhood has a different pattern of injuries.  The main reason for this is engineering.  Children's bones are less brittle, especially when they are very young.  They are also very flexible creatures.  The combination of these mean that sprains are far less common in the under five year olds.  It also means that small children can fracture bones with seemingly innocuous injuries.  The best example of this is the toddler's fracture, which can occur with a simple tumble from running.

2.  Small children may not localise injuries well

There are several reasons for this and nobody really knows what they are.  I suspect that it is a combination of not being aware of specific body parts (have you ever seen a 3 year old draw a person?) and basic stupidity inherent to being a small child.  Whatever the reason, it is wise to look at least one joint above and below the reportedly injured part before deciding what to do.

3.  It is particularly desirable to avoid radiation in children

Because children are more susceptible to the dangers of X-rays, unnecessary radiation should be avoided.  X-rays should be done if there is a good chance that they will change management.  They should not be done for reassurance or as part of defensive medicine.

4.  If a child has normal use of the limb after analgesia then they are very unlikely to have a significant injury.

The ability to move a joint well is a good rule out (for the exception to this, see below), but persistent pain after analgesia does not always mean a treatable injury.

5.  Some children perceive and respond to pain differently.

Children with neurological or developmental problems including ADHD and ASD are more capable of having significant fractures despite seemingly normal limb function.  These children require a higher index of suspicion and a more interventional approach.

6.  Sometimes, the injury is not an injury (as such)

Amazingly, young people often ignore niggling pains.  They do so until whatever is a problem is suddenly made worse through exertion or an injury.  For this reason, some things that present as injuries are more significant and long term problems.  That doesn't mean that you have to disbelieve every injury.  However if something is slow to resolve or doesn't fit then it is wise to look again.  There are certain presentations, (e.g. as adolescents with hip pain after an injury) that should always be investigated carefully.

7.  The injury should fit the mechanism

This applies for several reasons.  The one that most will think of is the issue of safeguarding.  However it is equally true that when the mechanism does not really explain the injury, there may be a medical reason for this.  For that reason, keep an open mind. (Ref Shrodinger's Safeguarding)

Assessing and treating minor injuries in children is relatively straightforward and rewarding.  If you know what to look for and what the pitfalls are, it is often possible to be pragmatic.  Investigations are not always necessary and children heal quickly, given the chance.

GPpaedsTips is written for clinicians.  We all have to work within our own competencies.  However I don't think that minor injuries are more complicated than minor illness in children.

If it isn't broken give them analgesia and a sticker.  But how do I know????   That's easy.  Sometimes you just know because the child shows you how uninjured they are, sometimes it doesn't necessarily matter (that will be covered in the specific injury posts coming soon) and sometimes I doubt myself and do an X-ray.  And that's fine too.

Edward Snelson
@sailordoctor

Disclaimer: On no account is anyone to ask my children about my ability to recognise a significant injury.

This post is the first in a series of posts about injury.  Click these links to read about specific injuries and when to treat, refer etc. -

• Head injuries
• Finger injuries
• Pulled elbows

Socrates to the Rescue - When "Why?" Becomes How to Recognise Child and Adolescent Mental Health Problems

How can a paediatric subspecialty be so difficult and shrouded in mystery?  Even the name, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, is complicated.

What do they do?  The mystery extends to the online world of open-access medical education.  Because I am putting together some resources for a university course at the moment, I went on my usual trawl for journal articles and online resources that might give me an idea about how we mere mortals should be doing our bit for child mental health problems.  Compared to similar advice for asthma, sepsis or even just the limping child, there is virtually nothing out there for the clinician who recognises child mental health as a personal educational need.

What to do?  Phone a friend.  Yes, I spoke to an actual person.  My expert told me that there are simple things that we can do to be a bit better at this.  We need to ask more questions.

In order to do this we must enter the mind of a two and a half year old...     ...or an ancient Greek philosopher.  You decide.

If you've never taken a two and a half year old for a quick jolly down to the shops then you've really missed out.  It goes something like this:

Socrates taught his students to question everything, including the answers to their questions.  In this way, the answer behind what was superficially apparent comes to you.  It's something that we all knew briefly when we were two and a half, but sometimes forget now that we are grown up and a bit dull.  What is superficially apparent can seem to be the end point, but in child and adolescent mental health, it probably isn't.

Let me apply Socratic (if Socrates was two and a half) method to some common presentations to General Practice or the Emergency Department:

A 12 year old has abdominal pains that only occur during school terms.
Obvious answer: School avoidance.
Ask the question, "Why school avoidance?" - Answer: Anxiety symptoms due to undiagnosed dyslexia.

A 13 year old is smoking cannabis every day.
Obvious answer: Bad parents and a chaotic home.
Ask the question, "Why?" - Answer: They have been having anxiety symptoms every day for nearly a year.  Months ago, they were given some cannabis to try and they found that it helped take away that feeling.  They started using it to feel more 'normal', not to get high.

A 15 year old has multiple symptoms for which there is no sensible medical explanation.
Obvious answer: Attention seeking
Ask the question, "Why?" - Answer: No obvious reason, so what else is going on?

The list of things that young people present with that are viewed as behavioural include cutting/self-harming and anorexia.  The reasons may be elusive, but they may also be identifiable.   There may be a safeguarding issue.  

Every one of these children deserve to have someone ask the question "why?"

In many cases they may not know why.  They may not be able or ready to articulate it even if they do know.  However, many young people can explain why they do what they do if someone is willing to give them a safe place to do so.

The important thing is to move away from making the obvious assumptions and instead always assume that there is more than meets the eye.  The evidence is that mental health problems in young people are often not recognised.

In Emergency Medicine there is a saying, "The easiest injury to miss is the second one."  That is equally true of child mental health. How do we make sure we always find the hidden problem? I don't know. Ask a two year old.

Edward Snelson
@sailordoctor

Schrodinger’s Safeguarding Case

Whether you've been practising medicine for 30 minutes or 30 years, dealing with the issue of safeguarding is one of the biggest challenges for any of us.  We are told that there are several must do’s such as:

Wait a minute...   I know the list goes on but those first two are quite enough to deal with before we process any more.  What those two statements mean in practice is that the minute I've thought of a way that this could be a safeguarding issue, I am doing mental gymnastics trying to figure out the following things: 

If this comes easily to you then you have my admiration.   For the mortals among us it is so challenging that at some point most of us have wished that there was no concern or that we didn't have to be the one that brought it up.  You have to be careful though, because when you find yourself wishing for these things you might just do something to make them happen.  It is within your power to explain the concern away.  It is possible to refer to someone else who will take your concern further without telling the parents.  Neither of these are good ‘ways out’.

The problem is that we often see the way forward as a choice or a judgement on the situation.  This choice forces us to feel as though we are choosing sides which is intuitively at odds with our instinct to be on the side of the parents.

There is a solution that I believe does work: Schrodinger’s safeguarding.   [If you don’t know about Schrodinger’s cat (a mixture of quantum physics and animal abuse that makes sense in a strange way) then don’t worry.]  The principle that I want you to get you head around is this:

In this way you can overcome all the barriers to dealing with the problem.

Because you treat the concern as fully real:

• You will act in the best interest of the child.  You will explore the concern until satisfied.
• You will involve all the right people.
• You will ask all the right questions and document things in far more detail than you would normally.
• You will tell the parents that you have a concern because you can’t do the first three things adequately without them noticing that something is going on.

Because you treat the concern as fully false you will come across differently and the parents will sense your open-mindedness:

• You will come across as non-judgemental.   You will be able to be matter of fact about the need for the safeguarding concern to be raised and answered and they will sense that you have not judged them.
• You will keep the health of the child as a top priority.  The parents will have come with their own agenda and you will remember to address that just as you would have normally.  This also helps parents to see that you have not de-humanised them.

So next time you have a safeguarding concern, do put it back in the box.  Not a Pandora’s box but a Schrodinger’s box.  You're not making a judgement but you do need to do both of your jobs.

Edward Snelson

@sailordoctor

Disclaimer:  Damn it Jim, I'm a doctor not a quantum physicist.