Preventing injuries by age, and safe sleep for infants

What it is

Road traffic injuries, drowning, burns, falls and poisoning are the leading injury causes of death in children. Injuries are not bad luck: young children explore and taste everything, so adults must control the risk. The nurse uses every contact, from the newborn visit to the school-age check, to ask about the home and to give advice suited to the child's age and abilities. For infants, safe sleep is part of the same conversation.

What it requires

• Ask about the home in every visit: water storage, stairs and windows, kitchen, where medicines and chemicals are kept, transport.
• Match the advice to development: the crawling infant, the walking toddler and the school child face different risks.
• Name concrete actions, not general warnings.

Components

• A safe home: hazards out of reach, protections where the child could fall.
• Care outside the home: water, roads, animals and dense vegetation.
• Safe sleep for the infant.
• Knowing what to do and where to go if an injury happens.

How it is applied (and why)

1. Ask the carer to describe the home and a normal day — risks are found in routines, not in lists.
2. Relate risks to the child's next skill (rolling, crawling, walking, climbing) — injuries happen when abilities outpace supervision.
3. For infants, review where and how the baby sleeps — back sleeping on a firm, empty surface lowers the risk of sudden infant death.
4. Ask how water is stored and agree on lids and supervision — small children can drown in very little water.
5. Agree where medicines, cleaning products and pesticides will be stored, high and locked — children taste what they find.
6. Review the kitchen: hot pots, lit candles and matches out of reach — burns are among the leading injury deaths in children.
7. Ask how the child travels and stress restraints, helmets and never crossing alone — road traffic is the leading injury killer.
8. Teach that after an injury the child goes to the health service, and to avoid home remedies that may cause harm — wrong first aid can worsen injuries.

In nursing practice

• Record the advice given and any risk found, and check it at the next visit.
• Combine injury advice with other AIEPI key practices: vaccination, feeding, hand washing, signs of danger.
• An injury that does not fit the story or the child's development calls for assessment of possible maltreatment.
• Supervised community childcare for pre-school children and basic swimming and water-safety lessons for school-age children also reduce drowning.

Common mistakes

• Saying 'watch your child' without a concrete action.
• Accepting pillows, blankets, bumpers or inclined surfaces in the baby's sleep space.
• Forgetting water stored in buckets, tanks and wells.
• Treating injuries as bad luck instead of risks that adults can control.

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Elsewhere in DurgiPedia

• Sudden infant death syndrome: what is known
• Sudden unexpected death in adults and infants

Connections

← All of nursing

Educational content for students; it does not replace your institution's protocols, supervised clinical training or a prescriber's order. Dose-calculation examples use made-up numbers: they are educational, not a clinical order.

Sources: Componente comunitario de la estrategia AIEPI: guía para referentes y coordinadores locales (Ministerio de la Protección Social de Colombia / Organización Panamericana de la Salud, 2010); Helping babies sleep safely (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2024); Drowning (fact sheet) (World Health Organization, 2026); Preventable injuries kill 2000 children every day (World report on child injury prevention) (World Health Organization / UNICEF, 2008).

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