Guidelines developer: Clinical guidelines for pediatric concussion
Context
Pediatric concussion is often inadequately managed because health care practitioners’ knowledge varies tremendously. In response, the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation (ONF) funded a project at the CHEO Research Institute to develop the first comprehensive best practice guidelines for pediatric concussion in North America.
Objectives
- Ensure that the key drivers are clinical utility and plain language;
- Deliver a series of interactive PDFs to the ONF, customized for health care professionals; schools and sports organizations; and families.
Action
- Conceived an innovative, action-based format that provides instructions, information and hyperlinks to appropriate tools and algorithms at a glance.
- Developed the organizing principle for the user-oriented tables of contents. These are also the foundation for cheat sheets for each user group and for an app.
- Managed and organized incoming content from 30+ clinicians and stakeholders.
- Wrote the guidelines in their entirety over 8 months.
Impact/Benefit
- 24,951 hits within 24 hours of release (9,157 unique visitors).
- Immediate pick-up by groups, including the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (USA) and Child Care BC.
- Comment from peer reviewer, Rebekah Mannix, “These guidelines are exceedingly clear and comprehensive. ...will be an indispensable resource for caregivers in a wide range of settings and also be accessible for the general public.”
- The New England Journal of Medicine highlighted the Guidelines as THE go-to resource in its summary of pediatric concussion.