Prevention of childhood poisoning: efficacy of an educational program carried out in an emergency clinic

Abstract

For many inner-city families, the emergency clinic is the most frequent and sometimes the only point of contact with medical services. We hypothesized that this setting could serve as an opportunity to direct a health promotion at a population that might not receive such a message elsewhere. The objectives of the program were (1) to remind parents of the telephone number of the Massachusetts Poison Center, (2) to ensure that parents have ipecac for use in an emergency, and (3) to counsel parents on how to use ipecac. Of 403 families recruited from the emergency clinic and divided randomly into intervention and nonintervention groups, 262 families completed the follow-up interview 6 months later (65%). Results showed that 68% of intervention families compared with 42% of control families reported ipecac storage at follow-up (chi 2 = 7.65, P = .005) and that 40% of intervention families v 25% of control families reported familiarity with the use of ipecac (chi 2 = 4.04, P = .04). Accessibility to the poison center's telephone number was reported by 62% of intervention families and by 49% of control families (chi 2 = 4.60, P = .13). Finally, 42% of intervention families v 25% of control families reported that they had a sticker on their phone with the number of the poison center on it (chi 2 = 4.60, P = .03). Our results suggest that a brief intervention, even in an emergency clinic, can introduce the topic of poisoning prevention to families and can encourage the storage of syrup of ipecac in the home.