My 2-year-old just gulped fabric softener! Should I worry that my little boy isn’t talking yet? Is this rash cradle cap or smallpox?
For 25 years, worried parents have been able to call (314) 454-KIDS for instant, helpful advice from a nurse at Saint Louis Children’s Hospital. Back in the late ’90s, the hotline received as many as 90,000 calls a year. “Over the years, we watched the volume of calls go down,” says Julie Bruns, director of the hospital’s call center. “In 2014, there were only 12,000 calls—and only half of them were for nursing advice. Our nurses said, ‘We’re getting all these calls and they just want to be routed somewhere else in the hospital.”
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Children’s had done such a good job teaching parents that memorable 454-KIDS number, they were using it for everything else. And Children’s had done such a good job sponsoring a free mobile app, Kid Care, that parents have been using that instead.
So yesterday, January 1, 2015, the hotline closed. Here are your new options:
*Download the free app, which offers information about conditions, illnesses, general health, and child development searchable by symptom, illness, or keyword.
*Call the St. Louis Children’s Hospital Family Resource Center, 314-454-2323, which opened several years ago and can provide the same information.
*Consult the hospital’s online health library, which offers the same information that’s in the app, which is the same information that guided the nurses’ advice on the old hotline. It was written by Dr. Barton Schmitt, guru of pediatric telephone—and now web—medical advice.
*Use the after-hours nurse triage service Children’s offers to many pediatricians.
*Google. Responsibly. “There’s lots of health information out there that isn’t evidence-based,” says Bruns. “Or tested. Or valid.”
The old hotline number remains in service for general information, class enrollment, and referrals to pediatricians. No nurses will lose their jobs as a result of the closure—but a few parents might find their jobs a little harder.
Just make sure you have the numbers of Poison Control (1-800-222-1222), your pediatrician, and your mother’s landline stuck to the fridge.
