Legislative Findings and Purpose. It has been estimated that between 8,000-12,000 of the 22,000 American children who die from injuries each year could be saved by the establishment of injury prevention programs and emergency medical services systems for children.
American children die annually from such illnesses.
Available estimates indicate that the implementation of comprehensive and effectively linked services for emergency medical care does ensure better outcomes and that the economic benefits of an emergency medical system for children would be significant. Children react differently than adults to stress, metabolize drugs differently, and suffer different illnesses and injuries. Because of these differences, children's emergency and critical care medical needs should be recognized separately within this State's existing emergency medical services system. Emergency medical services training programs typically focus on adults and therefore offer few hours of pediatric training. In addition, many emergency medical services personnel have limited clinical experience with children, indicating the need to improve training of these personnel in pediatric emergencies.