COSI Blog
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Dr. Mike Patrick

Dr. Mike Patrick is an emergency and urgent care physician at Nationwide Children's Hospital and a parent of two teenage children. Each week, Dr. Mike presents news parents can use, answers listener questions, and interviews pediatric experts on the award-winning PediaCast: a pediatric podcast for parents.
15
May
2013

When your child is injured....

Warm sunny weather provides the perfect opportunity for parents to power down electronic screens and chase their kids out of the house and into the great outdoors.

Makes sense, right?

After all, increased screen time leads to decreased physical activity and increased snacking, essential ingredients for obesity. But let's face it... the great outdoors has problems of its own: injuries!

Head contusions, bee stings, lacerations, broken bones and sprained ankles. You don't get these from a couple hours on the PlayStation. Let your kids run around outside, and you have a different story.

Still, the benefit of outdoor activity outweighs the risk. And there are things you can do to prevent injuries, such as cycling with helmets, skating with knee pads and wrist guards, taking swimming lessons, and good old-fashioned adult supervision.

But sometimes our best effort still leads to an accident. At these times, parents ask themselves an important question: Where do we turn for help?

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