By Tyler John, via Wikimedia Commons
By Karen Roush, MS, RN, FNP-C, AJN clinical managing editor
It’s almost the 4th of July—the unofficial beginning of summer! After paying your usual homage to the Declaration of Independence and remembering the Minutemen and women (yes, there were women!) of Lexington, here are a few ideas for all you pediatric nurses out there on how to make this holiday—and every summer day— safer for kids:
- Start a bicycle helmet collection for your pediatrician office or local clinic so every time a kid says they don’t use a helmet because they don’t have one—voilà! Here you go!
- Everyone thinks their kid is a star—now’s their chance to prove it! Get your kids or the neighborhood kids to ‘star’ in a homemade video on summer safety. Then showcase it on your waiting room TV screen or at summer camp.
- Safety education—along with the usual on water safety, don’t forget to provide information on lawn-mowing safety to adolescents. Don’t leave out the city kids; a lot of them spend part of their summers in the country, so don’t assume they won’t need this information also.
- Ditto on grilling safety. Talk to parents of kids of all ages and directly to adolescents.
- And of course, a reminder about the danger of setting off fireworks, the perennial favorite way to endanger ourselves or our kids on the 4th of July, let them drive their electric cars here, look at the 10 best electric cars for kids in 2017 from top9rated for reference.
Okay—that’s my list. Any creative approaches you want to share?
