Children’s trauma nurse promotes wearing of cycle helmets to tackle child head injuries

Angela Lee, a paediatric nurse in a children’s trauma unit, has seen only too well the devastating effects of children’s cycling accidents, particularly where the child was not wearing a cycling helmet.

A child is more than three times more likely to die in an accident than an adult because their skin is thinner and more susceptible to head injury. New statistics from the Department of Transport showed an alarming increase in the number of child cyclists killed on the roads between 2011 and 2012, which more than doubled.

However, wearing a helmet has been show to reduce this by up 88% in both children and adults, which is way Angela is championing the cause of helmet wearing among children, and launched the Bicycle Helmet Initiative Trust.

Drawing on her 20 plus years in the trauma unit, Angela initially delivered cycle safety talks at secondary schools in her local area of Reading. She created the trust in 1998, and promotes the benefits of wearing a helmet when cycling, working with parents, teachers, and police and road safety officers.

Angela notes that children are often affected by peer pressure so it’s important to share safety messages at the younger end of secondary school to try and combat this: “Younger teenagers are affected by image and peer pressure. For them, it’s often a case of image over safety. I’ve seen children die for the sake of their image”

This view is reinforced by research conducted by the Brain Injury Group last year. The study, carried out with Activate Sport[1], found that among 100 active youngsters aged 11-16, 69% said they would prefer it to be law for under 16s to wear a helmet when cycling, yet only 34% of the same children said that they always wore one, which suggests that peer pressures might be at play.

Read the source article here http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/419921/The-nurse-who-is-saving-young-cyclists-lives