ACS Co-Writes Policy Statement on Pediatric Readiness in the ED

The ACS has joined with experts from the American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Emergency Physicians, and Emergency Nurses Association in a policy statement outlining key steps that emergency departments can take to meet the needs of pediatric patients.

The statement was co-published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS) along with Pediatrics, Annals of Emergency Medicine, and the Journal of Emergency Nursing. 

The 2025 updates to the previously released 2018 recommendations include:

• Increased focus on pediatric-specific clinical practice guidelines and decision support tools for common conditions to standardize care
• A list of nationally vetted pediatric quality measures, including targeted measures by condition
• New emphasis on the need for multidisciplinary review of all pediatric deaths and adverse events to assist emergency departments in local quality improvement efforts
• A deeper focus on pediatric mental health, including universal suicide screening in teens
• Reinforcement of the importance of immediately available, portable, weight-based pediatric resuscitation carts and use of medication dosage tools to avoid manual calculations
• Broader expectations for pediatric considerations in disaster preparedness

In the commentary accompanying the JACS article, Jeffrey D. Kerby, MD, PhD, FACS, Chair of the ACS Committee on Trauma (COT), noted that care at pediatric trauma centers has superior outcomes, but timely access to these centers is lacking. Only 51% of children have reliable access to a pediatric trauma center within an hour of where they live.

“Given the persistent and highly prevalent lack of timely access to pediatric trauma centers for children, demonstrated mortality benefit of treatment at high readiness centers, and reasonable costs associated with these improvements, the ACS COT is fully supportive of this Joint Policy Statement and is strongly encouraging all trauma centers to optimize their own Pediatric Readiness,” Dr. Kerby notes.