Generally isn’t that major.
The vast majority of incidents that trigger the ‘trauma tree’ in paediatrics are discharged within 24 hours.
The first paeds major trauma I saw sounded pretty serious on the way in: a hypotensive 12 year old boy involved in an RTC with part of his jaw missing. When he came in he was conscious, talking and haemodynamically stable…it turned out that the bit of his jaw missing was a couple of teeth. This boy had snapped the steel bar connecting the wing mirror to a minivan with his head and he had no brain bleed at all!
Other kids have fallen down tens of stairs and seemingly just bounced. Because of the mechanism of injury they are classified as ‘major trauma’ but many of these kids don’t have a scratch on them!
Even the girl who had to be intubated and sent to neurointensive care after a very high speed car accident was discharged four days later.
Saying that, whenever the ‘blue call’ alarm goes off in A&E I still stop talking to find out if it’s for us.
Another Medic No-Hoper 