Author: Kathleen Brown, MD – Children’s National Health System
The Federal Emergency Medical Services for Children (EMSC) Program recently released an infographic based on data from the National Pediatric Readiness Project assessment. The infographic states the importance of weighing children and recording the weight in kilograms, based on a patient safety recommendation from the “Guidelines for Care of Children in the Emergency Department.1
In its report Emergency Care for Children: Growing Pains, the Institute of Medicine also highlighted the need for physicians and other practitioners to weigh children and to record the weight in kilograms only.2 However, the Pediatric Readiness assessment revealed that half the hospitals in the nation do not weigh and record in kilograms. This simple patient safely initiative has been recognized as one of the most important to prevent drug-dosing errors and is one of the top 15 national hospital-based pediatric emergency care performance measures.3