Screening & Assessment

Pediatric Medical Traumatic Stress

Screening & Assessment: The basics

Screening and assessment allow health care providers to triage pediatric patients and families to the appropriate and needed level of psychosocial care.

Generally, we use screening to refer to brief methods that allow an initial look at distress, symptoms, or risk factors, and assessment to refer to a more comprehensive evaluation of psychosocial risk and pediatric medical traumatic stress. Click to learn more.

Screening for medical traumatic stress allows health care providers to gauge risk status or distress/symptoms to guide initial care planning -- and provide children and families with the appropriate level of care. Screening can be conducted by frontline healthcare providers and the results of screening are relevant for trauma-informed treatment planning by the healthcare team.

When warranted based on initial screening, a more in-depth assessment for pediatric medical traumatic stress is conducted by a provider with mental health training. Depending on the timing of assessment and the clinical needs of the child, this may include diagnostic assessment of traumatic stress:

acute stress disorder
posttraumatic tress disorder

Plus other frequently co-occurring concerns or disorders which have implications for health outcomes, such as:

anxiety
mood difficulties
behavioral problems
sleep problems

In this section, you can

Find tools for screening and assessment relevant to pediatric medical traumatic stress
Find information specifically for screening after pediatric injury
Learn about tools created and supported by the Center for Pediatric Traumatic Stress:
- The Psychosocial Assessment Tool (PAT)
- The Acute Stress Checklist for Children (ASC-Kids)

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Pediatric Medical Traumatic Stress

Patient Education

Intervention

Trauma-Informed Care

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