It’s the stuff of nightmares: a young child slips away unnoticed, wanders into a backyard pool and drowns. A teen swimming to a floating dock begins struggling and disappears. News reports of these tragedies and other drowning stories are too common. Drowning is a leading cause of injury death in children. In 2017, almost 1,000 U.S. children and teens died from drowning and 8,700 visited a hospital emergency room because of a drowning event.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is taking further action to educate about water safety. They recently revised their policy statement, Prevention of Drowning, to help pediatricians teach families about drowning risk and provide prevention strategies that are tailored to each family.
“We know from data that pediatricians don’t spend much time talking about drowning prevention. They have so much to cover in very limited time with families — development, mental health, school readiness or progress, the list goes on. Drowning kind of falls to the bottom,” said Dr. Linda Quan, co-author of the policy statement, and an emergency physician at Seattle Children’s. “What we wanted to do with this policy is highlight that some families are at higher risk for drowning and we can tailor education to their specific risk.” Read full post »