Drugs for the doctor's bag: 2-children

In May 2015, DTB published Drugs for the doctor's bag: 1-adults,(1) recognising the fact that there is still a need for some GPs to carry a range of medicines for use in acute situations when on home visits. What to include in the GP's bag is determined by the medical conditions likely to be met; medicines the GP is confident and competent to use; storage requirements and shelf-lives of drugs; ambulance paramedic cover and the proximity of the nearest hospital. Here we suggest medicines that a GP might want to have available for use in an emergency or for the acute treatment of children and adolescents, updating our previous advice(2) and where appropriate we have included the underlying guideline recommendations for their use. The intention is not to imply that every doctor should carry every drug mentioned. Instead, we aim to highlight some of the key treatments and suggest choices in some of the more common clinical scenarios that GPs may have to deal with in everyday practice, which may be prior to referral to secondary care. Each section ends with a list of drug recommendations for the doctor's bag; drugs may be referred to in several sections but are only listed in one section to avoid repetition. The article does not provide recommendations for drugs to be stocked for use in routine clinical practice in the surgery (e.g. for minor surgery) or for drugs to be held by out-of-hours primary care services.(3) Unless otherwise stated, the doses given are from the British National Formulary for children (BNFc).(4).