Two webinars to be held on pediatric readiness

May 19 and 20 webinar recordings now available

Is your emergency department (ED) or emergency medical services (EMS) agency ready to care for ill and injured children?

The National Pediatric Readiness Project (NPRP) focuses on ensuring pediatric readiness across the emergency care continuum – including ED-based readiness and prehospital readiness. The NPRP is ramping up efforts to engage practitioners and ensure they have the essential guidelines and resources needed to provide evidence-based, high-quality care to children.

The project will be highlighted during special webinars in conjunction with National EMS Week: “Pediatric Readiness: Every Child, Every Day” on Wednesday, May 19, will focus on pediatric readiness across the care continuum, while“This is EMS: Taking Care of Our Children” on Thursday, May 20, will focus specifically on prehospital pediatric readiness.

Pediatric readiness webinar on May 19

“Pediatric Readiness: Every Child, Every Day” will take place on May 19 – which is also Emergency Medical Services for Children (EMSC) Day – at 2 pm ET. It will highlight pediatric readiness across the care continuum, particularly the NPRP, a multiphase quality improvement initiative to ensure emergency care systems (prehospital and hospital) have the essential guidelines and resources needed to provide effective emergency care to children.

The webinar will feature opening remarks from Michael Warren, MD, MPH, FAAP, Associate Administrator, Maternal and Child Health, Health Resources and Services Administration, and a panel discussion moderated by Marianne Gausche-Hill, MD, FACEP, FAAP, who serves as Co-Director of the National Pediatric Readiness Project. The panel will include leadership across collaborating organizations: the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Emergency Nurses Association, the National Association of State EMS Officials, and the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma.

To register, visit ACEP’s website. (Note that registration with ACEP is required, but free and open to all.)

This webinar is happening in conjunction with two upcoming NPRP activities. The NPRP’s national assessment of EDs launches May 1, 2021 and will remain open through July 31, 2021. To access the assessment, visit pedsready.org. (ED nurse managers will receive several postal notifications with a link to the web-based assessment. Since only one assessment per ED can be completed, ED nurse managers are encouraged to collaborate with their ED leadership and review a PDF copy of the assessment at pedsready.org before taking it online.)

Then, in September 2021, the Pediatric Emergency Care Coordinator (PECC) Workforce Development Collaborative will launch to support and provide resources to pediatric champions in both the ED and EMS environment. EMS practitioners, ED-based physicians and nurses, and EMS for Children State Partnership program managers are encouraged to register and learn how to most effectively integrate pediatric needs into local emergency care systems. Registration opens May 1, 2021.

Additional resources on pediatric readiness, including prehospital and hospital-based toolkits and information on the PECC Workforce Development Collaborative, are available on the EMS for Children Innovation and Improvement Center (EIIC) website. In addition, the National EMS for Children Data Analysis Research Center (NEDARC) has developed a package of resources and materials for spreading the word about the NPRP assessment, as well as a promotional video.

Prehospital pediatric readiness webinar on May 20

A parallel webinar highlighting prehospital pediatric readiness efforts, “Pediatric Readiness: Taking Care of Our Children,” will be held on Thursday, May 20, at 2 pm ET. The webinar will include updates about National Prehospital Pediatric Readiness Project (PPRP) efforts to date, including a recently released EMS agency checklist and companion toolkit based on the 2020 joint policy statement, “Pediatric Readiness in Emergency Medical Services Systems.”

Following in the footsteps of the NPRP, the PPRP Steering Committee is working on creating a national assessment of EMS agencies, which will go live in 2024.

“We’ll be looking for user feedback on the toolkit content next,” says Rachael Alter, Co-Lead to the PPRP and EIIC’s Prehospital domain. “From there, we hope that EMS agencies across the country use both the checklist and toolkit to help them prepare for the upcoming assessment questions.”

The PPRP event will be hosted by ACEP in collaboration with EMSC and will feature multiple project subject matter experts. To register, visit ACEP’s website. (Note that registration with ACEP is required, but free and open to all.)

Pediatric readiness across the continuum

The NPRP is a huge undertaking that requires involvement and collaboration across EDs and EMS agencies.

“We are incredibly grateful to everyone involved in our pediatric readiness efforts, including the EMSC State Partnership managers who have been so engaged in the NPRP, providing support and continued collaboration toward the goal of improving care for ill and injured children,” says Kate Remick, MD, FAAP, FACEP, FAEMS, Co-Director of NPRP and Executive Lead for the EIIC. “We look forward to their assistance and involvement as prehospital and ED-based efforts move forward.”