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shaken baby syndrome
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Shaken Baby Syndrome Sitting in a chair next to his child’s hospital bed a middle-aged man is crying. Inside the room is dark and quiet except for the occasional beeping alarm from the various machines packed around the bed. The monitor above the bed has different colored lines moving rhythmically across the screen. In the center of it all lies a motionless toddler. He has no cloths on except for a diaper; criss-crossing wires and tubes cover the rest of his exposed skin. One of these tubes originates from the center of the child’s head raising strait up like a horn. The father occasionally throws a glance my way seemingly interested in engaging in a conversation. As his child’s nurse, I want to assess the father’s knowledge of the situation so I ask him an open-ended question, “what do you think happened that caused such a catastrophic brain injury to your child?” He looks at me as I should be telling him and says, “I was at work and I received a call from the baby sitter saying that my son was not acting right all morning and that he is now not waking up. She told me she called the ambulance and then I rushed in here to find my son like this. They told me my son had a brain injury. My wife and I could not recall the child falling and hitting his head at home recently so we asked his babysitter if she recalled any incidents. She told us the kids were jumping on a bed the day before and my son had fallen off the bed and hit his head.” Since I had already heard this story and knew it could not explain this child’s injuries, I asked the father, “did anyone explain the extent of the brain injury your child received?” He responded, “no, not really.” Taking things slowly and using terms everyone can understand I start to explain the etiology of an injury sustained by violent shaking.
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