Introduction to Emergency and Urgent Care for Children

Welcome to the Emergency and Urgent Care for Children: A Survival Guide MOOC.

I would like to extend a warm welcome to all of you joining the course. I really enjoy working at Birmingham Children’s Hospital – even though as you can hear on the video above, there is never a quiet moment!

The team will use this three-week course to guide you through the presentation and initial management of some of the most common medical and trauma conditions that affect children acutely.

During the course we will use a combination of brief lectures, video simulation and guided group discussion, to introduce you to a range of conditions including fever, head injury, and rashes, with three subjects per week.

For each condition you will look at how children present, what things are important in managing them outside the hospital setting, and what other things could cause similar symptoms. You are encouraged to take part in the test at the end of each topic. Don’t worry if you need to check some answers outside of the course material – all tests are open book and are designed to both help you learn and extend your learning further. For clarity, all our numbers and figures are taken from UK APLS. This is UK practice and clinicians outside the UK should adhere to local guidance.

All topics have a parent information leaflet which explains the topics in plain English, they also contain information that may be useful to clinicians as added extras.

The actors in these simulation are volunteers and not professionals, however the clinicians in these simulations are fully trained paramedics with WMAS.

We would expect every child to have a structured ABCDE approach for the assessment of a child but for the purposes of discussion and improved understanding in this MOOC we have deliberately told the teams to make assessments less than perfect. This encourages discussion and conversation in the forum about what is best practice.

Wherever possible we encourage learners to keep to the pace of the course. If you move ahead you will see the answers more quickly, but you will learn more if you move along with the group.

Who is it for?

The course is primarily aimed at professionals working in the pre-hospital environment who deal with unwell children.

This could include paramedics, pre-hospital medical teams, general practitioners, and health visitors but what we are covering will appeal to a wider audience as well, such as teachers, parents, grandparents, etc.

Whilst some medical knowledge is useful to gain the most from the course, it is not essential and lay people are encouraged to take part in the hope that they would gain some useful knowledge about caring for children who become acutely unwell. In order to help with this, we have included a Parent Information Leaflet which is downloadable from the first page of each new topic. This is a really helpful guide – we encourage that you save/download/print them for future reference should you wish to.

The Team

The Team is comprised of Consultants in Children’s Emergency Medicine, and Senior Advanced Paramedics.

Dr Tina Newton

Tina is a Consultant in Paediatric Emergency Medicine at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. She has been a Consultant in the NHS for 10 years, is the Clinical Lead for the ED, Trust Lead for Children’s Major Trauma, and until recently has played a national role in training future Paediatric Emergency Medicine doctors. Birmingham Children’s Hospital Emergency Department sees approx 56,000 children per year with a range of major and minor illness and trauma.

Dr Kate Mackay

Kate is a Consultant in Paediatric Emergency Medicine at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. She originally trained in London, and moved to join the team at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. She has an interest in medical education and trauma, and has been an honorary lecturer at University College London, and designed modules for a BSc in Child Health.

Dr Damian Roland

Damian is a Consultant and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Paediatric Emergency Medicine working at Leicester Hospital and Leicester University. He has a research interest in scoring systems and educational evaluation and is an active user of Social Media to improve Knowledge Translation for himself and others.

Shane Roberts

Shane is a Paramedic employed by West Midlands Ambulance NHS Foundation Trust as their Head of Clinical Practice for Trauma Management, he has over 30 years’ experience in pre hospital care including air ambulance operations and instructing. He has had an interest in pre-hospital paediatric and trauma care from an early stage in his career.

Jason Wiles

Jason is a Paramedic employed by West Midlands Ambulance NHS Foundation Trust as their Head of Patient Safety. Jason has a keen interest in pre hospital paediatric care and leads on this for the Trust. He has tailored his ongoing education to paediatrics and has been fortunate to work alongside the team at Birmingham’s Children Hospital A&E.

Dr Lorna Bagshaw

Lorna is a Consultant in Paediatric Emergency Medicine at Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals. She has an interest in spreading excellence in care for acutely unwell children from dedicated centres out to peripheral hospitals and the community as effectively as possible.

Dr Mark Lyttle

Having trained in the UK and Australia, Mark is a Consultant and Senior Research Fellow in Paediatric Emergency Medicine based in Bristol. He is always happy to share what little knowledge he has, to realise the benefits of communication and multi-professional integration in improving outcomes for acutely unwell children.

Professor Russell Beale

Russell is the Executive Producer for this course. He is a Professor of Human Computer Interaction at the University of Birmingham, and has worked as a Critical Friend for Future Learn. He brought his expertise in massive online pedagogy along with his video ninja skills to help create an effective social learning experience.

Jacqui Corrin

Jacqui is the Producer and Project Manager for this MOOC. She has an special interest in promoting advances in medical device technology and medical education.

This MOOC was generously supported by West Midlands Trauma Network and West Midlands Ambulance Service. Educators and actors kindly gave their time for free to keep costs to a minimum.

Course note: Individuals and pathologies vary greatly. The research, opinions and content presented throughout the course should in no circumstance be solely relied upon by any learner. If a learner is suffering from a particular health condition being discussed during the course, they should always seek medical advice from a qualified practitioner.