NEW PROGRAM, FIRST-EVER IN CORPUS, AIMS TO EDUCATE ADOLESCENTS HOW TO HANDLE EMERGENCIES, ETC. WHEN BABYSITTING

Safe Sitter Class
For girls and boys ages 11 - 13
Tuesday, August 5, 2003 l 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Driscoll Children's Hospital l 3533 S. Alameda Ave.
$25 per person (includes completion ID card)
Call (361) 694-6700 to register or with questions

(Corpus Christi, TX) The best babysitter is a safe sitter! Thousands of 11- to 13-year olds in the United States babysit on a regular basis. How many of them are truly prepared for the responsibility they accept when they take a babysitting job? Would they respond quickly and appropriately to a seriously injured or choking child? In the more likely event of minor injury, would they handle the problem correctly, comfort the child, and provide appropriate first aid? Students from the Safe Sitter program are trained and prepared to do all these things.

Driscoll Children’s Hospital will be hosting the first-ever Safe Sitter program in Corpus Christi. Designed for 11- to 13-year-olds, this medically accurate program written by a pediatrician and popular course teaches safe and nurturing childcare techniques, behavior management skills, and appropriate responses to medical emergencies. The goals of the 2-day program is to reduce the number of avoidable and unintentional deaths among children being cared for by babysitters. To date, thousands of young adolescents across the country have been trained by Safe Sitter to handle life-threatening emergencies. “When you accept a babysitting job, you accept the responsibility for a child’s life,” says Michelle Thomas, an injury prevention coordinator at Driscoll.

Safe Sitter students learn through interactive discussion, hands-on practice, and role play regarding a variety of topics including:

• Practical child care techniques
• Safety and security precautions
• Rescue breathing and care of choking for an infant and child
• Recognizing emergencies
• Calling for emergency help
• Managing common problem behaviors
• Learn age appropriate activities
• Business aspects of babysitting

In order to successfully complete the Safe Sitter program, students must pass a rigorous practical and written test to show that they have mastered the key concepts and have the skill necessary to handle an emergency. The Safe Sitter program is recognized for excellence by the American Academy of Pediatrics which awarded Dr. Patrician A. Keener, founder, the Ross Education Award for the development of Safe Sitter. The one-day class is $25 per person and includes a Safe Sitter manual, t-shirt, backpack with band-aid dispenser, important numbers pad, introduction card, penlight and completion card.

About Driscoll Children’s Hospital
“Improve the health of adults and you give them back their health …
Improve the health of children and you give them their life.”

Since opening its doors in 1953, Driscoll Children's Hospital has been offering hope and healing to the children of South Texas for half a century. The facility is a 200-bed pediatric tertiary care center with pediatric board-certified specialists representing 19 medical and nine surgical specialties. The facility’s referral area spans 31,000 square miles, making it larger than the state of South Carolina, and offers care to children throughout the Coastal Bend and Rio Grande Valley. Each year, more than 6,000 children are admitted for inpatient care, 5,000 for day surgery and 50,000 for outpatient primary and specialty care. The first South Texas hospital with emergency services exclusively for children, Driscoll provides emergency care to more than 40,000 children per year. Additionally, Driscoll maintains a state-of-the-art ground/air transport team, 20-bed pediatric intensive care unit and 40-bed neonatal intensive care unit, renowned pediatric intensive care program, specialized medical outreach to the children of South Texas.

www.driscollchildrens.org

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