Unintentional v. Accidental Injuries - Peds

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Specializes in Acute Care Psych, DNP Student.

Does anyone know the difference between these two in pediatrics? I see this in my powerpoint, but it is not discussed in my textbook.

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Accidental Injury - Random in nature. (Car accident)

Unintentional Injury - Accidental but preventable. (Hurt playing a sport, horse playing, etc)

At least that's how we were taught.

ETA:

We were told not to worry about the difference. Only to be aware that some people may delineate between the two.

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Specializes in Education, FP, LNC, Forensics, ED, OB.

This is the same thing.

The term unintentional injury has replaced the term accidental injury in many areas of safety, healthcare, etc.

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I tried looking it up somewhere reliable. The CDC uses the words interchangeably. The words DO mean the same thing. SHRUG???

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Specializes in Education, FP, LNC, Forensics, ED, OB.
The words DO mean the same thing. SHRUG???

You are correct.

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Specializes in Nursing Professional Development.

I always learned that the difference lay in the intention of the person acting. If the person meant to act, but did NOT intend to harm the other person, it was an uninentional injury. An accidental injury is one in which the person did not intend for the action to happen at all. For example:

If I were to slap you on purpose -- not intending to hurt you seriously, but "unintentionally" knocking 2 teeth out in the process ... that would be an unintentional injury. I didn't mean to knock out your teeth. I meant only for your face to sting from my slap.

If I slipped on some water on the floor and in the process of falling down, my elbow hit your face and knocked out your teeth, that would be an accident. I never intended to hit you at all.

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Specializes in Acute Care Psych, DNP Student.

Last week in clinicals I was assigned to a month-old infant who was about to be withdrawn from the ventilator due to brain-dead status. The mother had been co-sleeping and rolled over on the baby. The baby suffocated and hemorrhaged.

The RN taking care of this case corrected me when I called it "unintentional" and said, "No, this is not unintentional, it's an accidental injury." I never got to follow up on the distinction. And now I see both terms in my powerpoints with an exam coming up.

Thank you all for your responses. llg, your example makes sense.

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Specializes in Cardiac.

How sad.

Also, sometimes you'll see it say SNAT which stands for Sudden Non-Accidental Trauma. Which is code for child abuse. Opposite from what you're talking about but it your post reminded me of it.

Where you there to see them withdraw care? Or did you get to see a donor approach?

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Specializes in Acute Care Psych, DNP Student.

Thanks for telling me about SNAT. I've never heard of it.

I did not get to see care withdrawn or anything related to organ donation. I think those happened after my clinical shift.

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Specializes in Cardiac.

What a bummer. That would have been a precious moment. You would have learned a lot with that. Dont' you hate it that all the good stuff happens after students leave? I've had some fantastic experiences for students that happened just after they left.

I'm guessing that they chose not to donate if they were withdrawing care.

How sad. I wish more people would donate. I know it's hard, especially for little babies.

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