Drowning prevention counselling by paediatricians to educate caregivers on water safety

Aim Drowning is the leading cause of unintentional injury death for children 1–4 years of age in the USA. Texas, a southeastern state, is disproportionately burdened by paediatric drowning. The aim of this project was to increase drowning prevention counselling provided during well‐child visits to families with children aged 0–10 years. Methods We developed and implemented a water safety counselling programme for paediatricians to impart to families during well child, urgent care and ED visits for 0–10 year age group. Physicians completed and self‐reported demographic, pre‐ and post‐intervention, counselling rate and project evaluation surveys, while caregivers completed post‐intervention surveys only. Both physicians and caregivers were surveyed on evidence‐based drowning prevention strategies (four‐sided fencing of pools, touch supervision, life jackets and swim/cardio‐pulmonary resuscitation classes). Results Thirty‐three physicians and 1934 caregivers participated in the project. Physicians demonstrated statistically significant improvement in discussing drowning prevention with patients (3.5 vs. 4 on Likert scale; P = 0.002) in 2018 versus 2019. The counselling frequency in primary care settings increased from 54% to 70% from year 1 to 2. 100% of physicians correctly identified the best drowning prevention strategy and 80.6% of caregivers reported learning new water safety information in 2019 versus 68.8% in 2018 (P value