The Initial Experience After Pediatric Firearm Injury: A Multifaceted Qualitative Approach

Introduction

Firearm victims sustain a disproportionate mental health burden. Inpatient pediatric psychology consult liaison (CL) services provide comprehensive evaluation after injury. We aim to explore CL documentation qualitatively to better understand the initial psychological experience after firearm injury in children compared to motor vehicle crash (MVC) injury. We hypothesized that meaningful differences between the cohorts would be evident by thematic, sentiment, and word cloud analyses of CL notes.

Materials and methods

This single-institution, retrospective study at a level I pediatric trauma center identified 5-17-y-old children who sustained firearm injuries and were admitted for ≥48 h from January 1, 2016 to March 31, 2021. Firearm-injured children were propensity score-matched to MVC-injured children. Thematic, sentiment, and word cloud analyses were completed for all CL notes.

Results

98 firearm-injured children were identified. The CL service evaluated 71% of firearm-injured children and 65% of MVC-injured children. Domains of resources, encountering the medical system, prior psychological and legal influences, immediate cognitive reactions, and social influences were identified based on extracted themes. Sentiment analysis revealed more negative than positive words for both firearm- (3318 versus 2190 words) and MVC-injured children (2225 versus 1994 words). Word cloud showed that firearm-injured child notes more frequently mentioned “trauma”, while MVC-injured child notes more frequently mentioned “family” and “support”.

Conclusions

The pediatric CL note analysis suggests that the experience after firearm injury differs from that after MVC injury in reference to family and support. CL notes covered a breadth of topics beyond the psychological impact alone. Understanding the experiences of injured children in relation to injury mechanism offers opportunity for focused intervention strategies.