Acute Head Trauma Clinical Pathway — Emergency Department
Acute Head Trauma Clinical Pathway — Emergency Department
Goals
- Standardize patient evaluation following acute head trauma
- Minimize the inappropriate use of head CT
- Rapidly identify potentially serious intracranial injury
- Reduce time to ultimate disposition
- Educate patient/family with concussion discharge instructions and schedule appropriate follow-up
- Always consider occult non-accidental injury in children < 2 years of age
Metrics
- Head CT frequency by age, triage category
- Frequency of sedations for head CT
- Additional time to observe and defer imaging
- Percentage of 72 hour revisits for those on whom imaging is deferred