An extremely ill or injured child – as parents and grandparents already know – constitutes a bona fide emergency for any family, but most community hospital emergency rooms nationwide are “ill-equipped” to offer infants and children the highest level of care, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Equipment alone is a major stumbling block for optimal emergency pediatric care at most hospitals. Adult-size IVs, breathing apparatus, airway management tools, crutches, splints and even slings, for example, simply don’t work properly for children.
Fortunately for parents and grandparents in the Port St. Lucie area, there is an emergency room nearby that possesses the highly-specialized knowledge, skills and equipment needed to treat critically ill kids – the Pediatric ER at Lawnwood Medical Center in Fort Pierce.
Separate from the hospital’s primary ER, the pediatric unit is just over two years old and currently serves the entire Treasure Coast.
“Our ER is unique,” says Dr. Julie Retureta. “One of the great things about it is it’s manned by pediatricians. There are three of us – myself, Dr. Brandi Walker and Dr. Nelson Obiwaku.”
Then the diminutive Retureta confides, “Pediatrics has its own little culture because you deal with patients who really can’t tell you what they have.”
Knowing what Lawnwood’s pediatric ER has is easier.
Already certified as a Level Two trauma center for children, there are currently “ongoing discussions” within the hospital about making the leap up to Level One pediatric trauma status.
Currently the nearest level-one trauma centers for children are at St. Mary’s in West Palm Beach and Orlando Regional.
Retureta, however, would rather talk about kids than trauma levels.
“We have a saying in pediatrics that children are not little adults, and it’s true,” she says with a smile. “The equipment is different. The anatomy of a child is different. They have their own diagnoses sometimes that you just don’t see in the adult world.”
As to what constitutes a typical day or night in a pediatric ER, Retureta says there’s no such thing.
“I think it’s actually very varied. You’ll have minor injuries, you know – kids coming in after a fall, ankle sprains, knee sprains or little lacerations. Then you’ll have things like fever, coughing and asthma. You’ll have vomiting, diarrhea and dehydration. We’ll have some kids with UTIs and a lot of them are not active, not peeing, not drinking, dehydration and those sorts of things. We’ll also have our pneumonias, our meningitis and our injuries that are more severe.”
For more information about the pediatric ER at Lawnwood Regional Medical Center, call 800-382-3522.