Fitting safety equipment in households with children under 5 does not reduce medically attended injuries in these children, but general practices' efforts to encourage such fittings do improve parents' safety practices. Watson and colleagues (p 178) randomised 3428 families with at least one child under 5 to a standardised safety consultation and provision of free or low cost safety equipment, or to usual care. Parents who received the intervention took their children to primary care for injuries significantly more often, but this was not followed by higher rates of attendance in secondary care or higher rates of medically attended injuries.
Figure 1.
Credit: JENNIE WOODCOCK/BUBBLES