Spotting the Sick Child
This comprehensive interactive DVD is designed to help health care professionals spot children with serious illness. Children have many minor illnesses as they grow up and it can be hard to tell what is wrong with them. They need a different approach from adults and many health professionals are anxious about assessing children. This DVD will help teach you the basics of how to approach and assess children of all ages.
It is aimed at:
- General practitioners
- A&E doctors
- Paediatricians in training
- Doctors in Foundation programmes
- Medical students
- Nurses who work in GP surgeries, paediatric wards, and A&E
- Nurse practitioners
- Health visitors
- Paramedics and Emergency Care Practitioners
Authored by:
Dr Ffion Davies, MRCPCH, FFAEM. Consultant in Emergency Medicine Presented by Dr Ffion Davies, Dr Mark Porter, Prof Tim Coats, Dr David Whittington, Dr John Criddle and Dr Malik Ramadhan.
Sponsored by:
The Department of Health (England), with the support of the Faculty of Accident & Emergency Medicine and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.
- Available within the NHS for the reduced price of £9.99.
- Purchase 6+ copies for only £8.99 each.
- Available to developing countries for the reduced price of £9.99.
- Purchase 6+ copies for only £8.99 each.
» Click here to contact OCB Media directly with order requests
- A general approach to children
- The 3-minute Toolkit of Examination (a checklist)
- How To …… (practical examination)
- Rashes
- Dehydration
- Difficulty in breathing
- Fever
- Head injury
- Fitting
- Abdominal pain
The title contains 3 and a half hours of video footage presented in a tutorial format, with sections broken down into small, easily navigable topics.
Spotting the Sick Child can be watched section by section or used as a reference resource for specific topics.The title can also be played on a large screen for teaching purposes.
A glossary of terms used is included, as well as useful “Red Flag” conditions. There is also an insert containing a table of normal physiological values and the addresses of useful websites.
FAEM Presentations
These 3 presentations were given in conjunction with a video presentation at the Faculty of Accident & Emergency Medicine Annual Scientific Conference in Leeds, November 18th, 2004.
They contain questions pertaining to the video material (which is not downloadable unfortunately) with the evidence base for the answers, based on an up to date literature search.
To view these documents you will need Adobe Reader. If you do not have this software you can download it here.
To download and install these presentations:
- Click the download link.
- Choose to "Save" the file to your computer's desktop or other convenient location.
- When the download is complete, double click on the file created and select a location for the presentations.
- Click on the "Install" button. The files will be placed in the location you selected and you may open them from there.
Multimedia presentations are rapidly becoming more prominent in the medical education field. Recognizing that most medical encounters involve all of our senses, it only stands to reason that those education programs that present patients in more than one medium will be more effective, not to mention more interesting. The DVD “Spotting the Sick Child” takes just this type of approach to present a textbook on disc in the evaluation of the acutely ill or injured child.
In various sections of this program, reference is made to the physical findings in patients with various components of the disease being discussed. Limited predominantly to visual findings, the authors have included small 10- to 30-second clips of specific findings unique to the pediatric physical examination. Using a combination of voice overs and combined audio-video segments, the authors intersperse these patient clips with standard video images of the narrator speaking. For most of the cases, the narrating physician will begin the section followed by a video image of a child with specific physician findings such as intercostals retractions. In all of the cases, the narrator can be heard describing the findings while the patient’s video is presented on the screen. In some instances, the narrator stops speaking and allows the ambient audio of the child and treating clinicians present the entire presentation.
The images of the specific cases are professionally recorded with consistent lighting, clear videos and centered focused views of the children under review.
There is also a section dedicated to the pediatric physical examination which is again well produced. The camera angles and lighting are precise and the entire examination can be easily appreciated even without the voice over.
The multimedia format is a major strength in “Spotting the Sick Child”. As noted above, the use of video images and, in some instances, sounds provides a much fuller clinical presentation than that possible with a standard written text.
The individual narrators are very polished and present a very professional image without appearing aloof. Their content is concise and edits nicely with the related video clips.
“Spotting the Sick Child” is a very well-produced multimedia DVD of the acutely ill or injured child. The basic material covered is well suited for students of all medical and nursing disciplines and should be in the library of any teaching institution.
This innovative joint project between the Department of Health and the
The DVD was commissioned due to the concern of the Department of Health in about door-to-needle times for meningococcal disease in children. The aim was to set up a video teaching package for A&E doctors and paediatricians about recognition of serious illness in childhood. The original remit was extended to include GPs, paramedics, emergency care practitioners, and others assessing children. I noticed that all the consultants received a copy as part of the Children’s National Service Framework package and it looked interesting. The cartoon representations on the cover artwork show a worried-looking doctor bemused by the caricatures of spotty, crying, febrile, and flushed children. This simple and inviting imagery nicely reflects the subject matter.
The DVD uses an interface which will be familiar to most. Seven menus, covering the top presenting emergency symptoms in childhood, function as gateways to symptoms based tutorials. This simple menu system is useful to get to a particular section quickly.
The opening sequence contains many of the images we will see during the DVD set to a symphony of crying, coughing, and calming background banter from parents, nurses and doctors. Following this there is a head-to-head edited interview with a “TV doc” and an A&E consultant (you can skip the entire intro at the push of a button). The conversation makes interesting watching as the TV doc tries to justify why spotting a sick child is so important. The A&E consultant gives a far more grounded perspective to assessing children in the clinical setting.
There are many great video clips shown, often with an explanatory narrative and some with a visual caption.
It is worth mentioning that along with excellent footage of symptoms, signs, and clinical evaluations is a lot of talk. The team of presenters use a formal and didactic delivery style, assiduously reading their script from an autocue. The tone is serious which is appropriate for the topic material.
I liked the 3 minute toolkit showing how an examination can be completed with a child on a mother’s knee. One highlight among the many excellent clips showing physical signs was the examination of a child with peritonitis. He winces and holds his abdomen rigid, even pushing the examining hand away. Watching such an examination is the next best thing to examining the child yourself, certainly better than a didactic session on clinical examination.
This DVD is a powerful, versatile and informative resource which will be able to offer many healthcare professionals in all specialities and at all levels of training insight into how and ill child might look in practice. Anyone would feel more skilled after spending time with this DVD. I hope it will help to demystify the paediatric assessment and give those clinical signs which we strive to explain a real and “live” feel. This DVD, with its instructive and common-sense approach, should take pride of place in induction programmes and would be a valuable teaching resource in any A&E department, paediatric unit or GP surgery. Overall, it definitely does what is says on the box.
This DVD, which is billed as "an educational tool for healthcare practitioners, to aid in recognition of serious illness in children", will be valuable for a range of practitioners from different backgrounds, whether in primary or secondary care. It is worth taking the time to assess the range of topics that are covered.
The rather dry beginning, with the emphasis on the three-minute consultation, was somewhat repetitive and did not make compelling viewing. However, the DVD soon progressed, giving clear clinical examples, which reinforced the need for health practitioners to fully assess and consider the child who attends.
For those with a background in primary care, the frequent shifts from that setting to secondary care (particularly A & E) could be seen as distracting and unhelpful. Nevertheless, the demonstration of the relevant physical signs on some delightful children will undoubtedly serve as good reminders for those whose technique needs refreshing, as well as for those who may be relatively new to paediatrics. It also features several video clips showing the effective clinical assessment of babies and children who are quite unwell and, in some cases, seriously ill. In particular, it shows that a significant amount of clinical information that can shape and influence decision-making can be obtained within three minutes.
The DVD, if watched in one session, may be quite long and could lose some of its impact. For someone familiar with the teaching material, it could be used skilfully to enhance teaching sessions in primary and secondary care for a range of conditions in infancy and childhood. Similarly, the material is suitable and interesting in the clinical detail for several groups of health professionals.
For those working in primary care, where sometimes the most difficult decisions are taken with respect to further intervention - referral to hospital or a wait and see approach - this DVD may jog a few memories and remind GPs particularly about the sometimes innocuous presentations of serious illnesses in childhood. Whilst the résumés of typical childhood illnesses - for example, respiratory illnesses and the characteristics of rashes - may seem obvious to many, we know from claims experience that these facts are not always universally known or recognised.
This teaching aid, therefore, is applicable to several health care settings and its use should be encouraged. If all those involved in the assessment of children could demonstrate their clinical skills to this level, ensuring that the basics have been covered and then documented, it might also reduce the all too frequent complaints from parents about perfunctory examinations when they have considerable concerns about the wellbeing of their children.
The DVD is available from OCB Media's online shop: money and time worth investing.
