Clinical Articles
The DOG BITES program: Documentation of growls and bites in the emergency setting*,**,*

https://doi.org/10.1067/men.2002.128717Get rights and content

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Goals and outcome objectives of the project

The goals of DOG BITES were to (1) provide an initial and bimonthly education program to ED personnel on the documenting and reporting of recommended child, dog, environment, and treatment factors in dog bite–related injuries, and (2) evaluate the effectiveness of this program on ED record documentation and mandated health department reporting through active surveillance. Through active surveillance, new cases are identified by the investigators through careful, ongoing reviews of the ED and

Implementation of the DOG BITES Program

The audience for the DOG BITES Program was the nursing, medical, and paraprofessional staff employed in the emergency department at CHP, because these persons are responsible for documenting patient triage assessments, histories, treatments, and outcomes. The complexion of the ED staff was 22 registered nurses, one family nurse practitioner, one physician's assistant, 10 board-certified pediatric emergency medicine attending physicians, and 10 paraprofessionals. Pediatric, emergency medicine,

Compliance with ed documentation of dog bite–related data

For data elements such as patient age and gender, which were abstracted directly from the patient's ED addressograph data, compliance was consistently 100%. The number of dogs involved in the biting episode also consistently reached 100%, because this data element was always asked in the patient history and the family knew the number of dogs involved. The remaining data elements, though, showed great variability within and between years, with a range of 0% compliance (no documentation on the ED

Discussion

Our DOG BITES education program was an interdisciplinary approach to educating ED staff on the importance of documenting and reporting dog bites in children receiving ED treatment. We met our goals of (1) providing initial and bimonthly education programs to ED personnel on the documenting and reporting of recommended child, dog, and environment factors in dog bite–related injuries and (2) evaluating the effectiveness of this program on ED record documentation and mandated health department

Conclusion

The DOG BITES Program was marginally effective in increasing compliance with ED staff's documentation of dog bite–related data. The program was not effective in increasing compliance with ACHD reporting of dog bites with the Animal Bite Report Form. Future efforts to increase compliance should include involving staff in time-limited activities related to the surveillance and education process.

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Cited by (11)

  • Contexts and consequences of dog bite incidents

    2018, Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research
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    Although these studies are useful, hospital data are likely to overrepresent more severe cases or younger victims (Lakestani et al., 2014). However, the reporting of dog bites and relevant information within emergency departments may not always be recorded, even when specific training is provided, or may be poorly documented because of time constraints and/or because there is no initial direct impact on a victim's treatment (Bernardo et al., 2002; Mannion and Graham, 2016). Therefore, information about dog bites gathered through hospital data is only part of the picture.

  • Epidemiological characterization of bites: A retrospective study of dog bites to humans in Chile during 2009

    2019, Journal of Veterinary Behavior
    Citation Excerpt :

    This pattern also occurs in other countries. Bernardo et al. (2002) indicated that several studies (Bernardo et al., 1998, 2000) found that an important part of the information was not recorded in the bite record forms used in the health centers they analyzed in the United States. The low completion rate of the questionnaires could be due to the large number of patients who come to the emergency services and the short time that the staff has to be able to complete the form.

  • An emergency department intervention to increase booster seat use for lower socioeconomic families

    2006, Academic Emergency Medicine
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    Much of the previous literature on ED prevention counseling focused on addressing addictive behaviors and other health care risks.18 More recently, ED-based injury prevention counseling has been proven to be effective for ED patients seen for an injury.13,14,19,20 Johnston showed that injured adolescents educated in the ED about risky behaviors were more likely to wear appropriate safety restraints in cars and wear bicycle helmets at three and six months following their intervention.13

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*

The DOG BITES Program was funded by a grant from the Emergency Nurses Association Foundation.

**

Reprints not available from the authors.

*

J Emerg Nurs 2002;28:536-41.

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