Paediatric procedural sedation and analgesia by emergency physicians in a country with a recent establishment of emergency medicine.

OBJECTIVES: Paediatric patients receive less procedural sedation and analgesia (PSA) in the emergency department compared with adults, especially in countries where emergency medicine is at an early stage of development. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the adverse events and efficacy of paediatric PSA in a country with a recent establishment of emergency medicine and to describe which factors aided implementation. METHODS: This is a prospective, multicentre, observational study of paediatric patients undergoing PSA by the first trained emergency physicians (EPs) in The Netherlands. A standardized data collection form was used at all participating hospitals to collect data on adverse events, amnesia, pain scores, and procedure completion. A survey was used to interpret which factors had aided PSA implementation. RESULTS: We recorded 351 paediatric PSA. The mean age was 9.5 years (95% confidence interval: 9.1-10.0). Esketamine was most frequently used (42.4%), followed by propofol (34.7%). The adverse event rate was low (3.0%). Amnesia was present in 86.8%. The median pain score was 2 (out of 10) for patients without amnesia. Procedures were successfully completed in 93.9% of the cases. CONCLUSION: Paediatric PSA provided by the first EPs in The Netherlands showed appropriate levels of sedation and analgesia with a high rate of procedure completion and a low rate of adverse events. Our paper suggests that EPs provided with a proper infrastructure of mentorship, training and guidelines can implement effective paediatric PSA.

Procedural sedation and analgesia practices by emergency physicians in the Netherlands: a nationwide survey.

BACKGROUND: Several efforts have been made to assure and to improve the quality of procedural sedation and analgesia (PSA) performed by emergency physicians (EPs) in The Netherlands. This study investigated the current PSA practice and competences of EPs in both adult and paediatric patients. In particular, if residency and current training, awareness of guidelines is sufficient for registered EPs to adequately perform PSA and if the availability of both adult and paediatric PSA in the ED is adequate. METHODS: A cross-sectional nationwide survey was performed amongst Dutch EPs (n = 463) in June 2016. We collected data on background, training, practice, and competencies of both adult and paediatric PSA. We investigated guideline adherence, reasons for not performing PSA, and desired improvements. RESULTS: The respondents (n = 191) represented 84.6% hospitals with EPs and 41.3% of all EPs in The Netherlands. Nearly all EPs (97.8%) performed PSA in adult patients compared to only 59.1% who performed PSA in paediatric patients (p < 0.001). The major reason for not performing paediatric PSA was caused by a lack of exposure during the training-program (74.1%). PSA-guideline knowledge (98.3%) and PSA related adverse event registration (98.3%) were excellent. Lack of 24/7-availability of both adult and paediatric emergency department PSA was mainly caused by a shortage of EPs. Self-reflection indicated that EPs feel less competent in performing paediatric PSA when compared to adult PSA. CONCLUSION: This nationwide survey demonstrates that there is still a significant gap between the performance of adult and paediatric PSA even though guideline adherence and registration of PSA-related adverse events appear to be adequate. Enhancement of paediatric PSA training in combination with an increase of EP-staffing can help improve the availability of adult and paediatric PSA in the emergency department.