Jocelyn Kearl

Jocelyn Kearl

Tuesday, 05 September 2023 10:51

Elena Burnett

Elena Burnett, BS

Marketing Specialist

 
801.447.9360 x108

Wednesday, 09 January 2019 08:53

Erika Petersen

Erika Petersen

Fulfillment & Inventory Coordinator


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Monday, 26 September 2016 09:54

Handouts - Monday

Monday, September 26, 2016

No handouts provided for this presentation.

No handouts provided for this presentation.

No handouts provided for Part One of this presentation.

pdf Handouts are available for Part Two of this presentation.

Lawrence R. Ricci, MD

blue baby booties hang on wall

 

Angel was then, and is even now, one of the most beautiful babies I have ever seen and I have seen many in my thirty years as a child abuse pediatrician. Yet, to look at her today, asleep against her foster mother’s shoulder, one could never guess at the devastation wrought upon her.

I first met Angel, then only a few months old, in the pediatric intensive care unit just before Christmas. She had been admitted unresponsive the night before. Her father had told the hospital staff that he had picked her up from her crib tochange her soaked diaper and as he did so she slipped from his grasp and fell back into her crib. He said she went limp and stopped breathing. He rushed her into his car and drove wildly to the local hospital. Eventually, Angel ended up in my hospital.

I was called in to see her after a CT scan showed subdural hematomas. Later, an MRI found evidence of parenchymal injury. An ophthalmology exam found such severe hemorrhages retinal hemorrhages that they were visible on the MRI.

Angel’s mother was at work when the injury occurred and only found out about it after Angel was rushed to the hospital. She told me what her boyfriend had told her, that Angel had fallen from his grasp into the crib. She said she had no reason to believe otherwise.

I finished the interview with Angel’s mother then spoke with her father. He was anxious and somewhat furtive. He told me that Angel had “peed everywhere,” on her clothes, in her bed. When he went to pick her up, she slipped from his grasp and fell onto the mattress. She immediately lost consciousness.

I ended the interview after a few more questions about the fall, and we both went back into the ICU, he to his baby’s side, me to the computer workstation to type my note. As I typed, Angel’s mother came up to me and said that she now knew what had happened. Her boyfriend had just then confessed to her that he had shaken Angel and that he wanted to talk to me.

I went into Angel’s hospital room. Her father was sitting on the cot with his head in his hands, Angel’s mother by his side consoling him. He didn’t look like a bad person; perpetrators rarely do.

Before I could speak he offered, “I’m sorry Doc. I lied. I shook her.”

I asked him why he had shaken her. “I picked her up from the crib. She was screaming and kicking and scratching at me, and I just lost it. I shook her.”

“Did the fall happen?”

“No, Doc. She didn’t fall. I shook her.”

And finally “What happened after you shook her?

“She went limp and stopped breathing. She looked dead. I know what I did was wrong. I’m sorry Doc.”

So there it was. I thanked him for telling me the truth. I told him it was the right thing to do and left to notify the police.

Months later, Angel’s father pled guilty to assault. He said at his sentencing that he had shaken Angel and that he was sorry. He is serving several years in prison.

All of that was yet to pass. Here was Angel in the ICU, profoundly brain damaged, never to awake, a victim of devastating violence, and for all the world she looked like a healthy, beautiful, three-month-old girl about to experience her first Christmas. Having seen too many shaken babies, it always astounds me how normal many of these babies look, few if any bruises, no obvious fractures, nothing to suggest the violence that had been perpetrated on them. To look at her in her hospital bed, surrounded by beeping instruments and tubes, intubated, not breathing, to look at her face and body, she looked fine, not a scratch, cherubic.

I saw her one last time several months later accompanied by her foster parents. Her functioning at a year was that of a one month old. Her existence, like that of a light switch without nuance, flipped between screaming/arching and deep sedation. She was quadriplegic, blind, and deaf. Her foster parents attend to her every day and every night, ceaselessly, religiously. I am myself not religious and have never said to anyone “God bless you.” I did to them. My eyes filling, I told them they were saints who deserved a special place in heaven.

There is something of a “debate” within the legal community and on the fringes of the scientific community about the existence of shaken baby syndrome. One argument offered is that confessions are always coerced. Another is that shaking cannot cause these injuries. Those who would say such things should talk to Angel’s father.

Yet, for Angel, none of this matters. Words and events orbit around her like so many errant planets: shaken baby prevention, child protective custody, termination of parental rights, grand jury, criminal prosecution, plea bargain, prison. Unknown and unknowing, immutably beautiful, she spins silently within her own dying sun.

God bless you Angel and may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Re-posted with permission from Dr. Lawrence Ricci. 

Read on KevinMD.com

Saturday, 13 February 2016 13:26

1996 Salt Lake City

First International Conference

The First International Conference on Shaken Baby Syndrome was held at the Little America Hotel & Towers in Salt Lake City, Utah. The leadership committee included co-directors Marilyn Sandberg, SSW, Executive Director, Child Abuse Prevention Center, Jacy Showers, EdD, Director, SBS Prevention Plus and sixteen other national experts in the field of child abuse.

Conference Highlights

The First International Conference on Shaken Baby Syndrome/Abusive Head Trauma drew over 750 attendees from a variety of disciplines, including medical, legal, investigative, prevention and parents. This conference included 89 of the leading experts on shaken baby syndrome. 

Many agencies, both local and national, supported this landmark event including: National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, Independent Order of Foresters, Intermountain Health Care, National Network on Shaken Baby Syndrome Prevention, Child Abuse Prevention Center, Utah.

Friday, 01 April 2016 08:32

Arkansas

The Period of PURPLE Crying was implemented in the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Nurseries (UAMS) and in the Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH) Nursery in Little Rock Arkansas in early 2013. Since then the program has been made accessible in the Emergency Department, and in the Infant/Toddler Unit of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital. It also has been made available to all the Pediatric Residents and Resident Physicians from other services via the ACH Intranet. The program has been evaluated by surveys completed by the parents of newborns admitted to the nurseries and by the nursing staff.

The Period of PURPLE Crying program is introduced in the pre-partum and post-partum units of the Obstetrics Units at UAMS, and as part of follow-up, the information is reviewed with the parents again as part of the discharge education. The UAMS nursery Education Team is working on creating an information packet about safety (Period of PURPLE Crying will definitely be included).

In the prenatal classes that are taught by 4 educators on the UAMS campus, the Period of PURPLE Crying is being mentioned in each one of the classes. The topics that are being taught include: preparing for birth, infant CPR and safety, breastfeeding, and newborn care. In the newborn care class, parents watch the Period of PURPLE Crying video! Prenatal classes are taught as well at the 12th Street Community Clinic. The Period of PURPLE Crying program is mentioned in those classes as well.

The Injury Prevention Center at Arkansas Children’s Hospital has been promoting the Period of PURPLE Crying as part of their Out-Reach Programs throughout the State of Arkansas.

In 2013, the Arkansas State Legislature assigned the Arkansas Department of Health with the task of creating brochures and other literature about Shaken Baby Syndrome that will be distributed in more than 100 hospital maternity wards, birthing centers and child-care centers across Arkansas. The Arkansas Department of Health makes information on the Shaken Baby Syndrome available on its website.

Our goal is to eventually have the Period of PURPLE Crying program in all the hospital maternity wards, birthing centers, and child care center across the state of Arkansas.

Contacts

Implementation Locations