An emergency doctor has warned of one way parents should avoid lifting their children.
Dr. J Mack Slaughter is known for his TikTok videos in which he shares what he has witnessed as an emergency room doctor. One of his recent videos explained the possible consequences of picking up a child by the wrist.
“What is one way you should never pick up a child?” The video of her started with her asking her viewers. The conversation quickly turned to an explanation of an injury known as babysitter's elbow.
The term babysitter's elbow dates back to when babysitters babysat children and were blamed for causing the injury by pulling on children's arms, according to Boston Children's Hospital. The injury is also called pulled elbow or radial head subluxation.
The injury will occur when the radius portion of the elbow joint moves out of place, leaving the elbow partially dislocated. Nanny's elbow is only temporary and can be fixed by an elbow reduction to return the radius to its proper position. According to the hospital, it is most common in young children between two and six years old and rare in children older than that age due to the maturity of their ligaments.
According to Slaughter, one way the injury can occur is when parents “grab their child by the wrist and just start swinging.” She said children typically love this interaction “until the head is dislocated from the radial bone.”
The ER doctor even admitted that he had previously accidentally given his own son a nurse's elbow. “Don't tell my wife, but one day I accidentally did this to our son,” he told his viewers.
“My daughter was two years old at the time and she started falling down the stairs. I picked her up by her wrist, saving her from falling down the stairs but dislocating her elbow. The good news is that I put it back in her place.”
“Nanny's elbow (also known as radial head subluxation) affects more than 20,000 children per year in the U.S., and more than 80 percent of those patients are between one and three years old,” he explained. Slaughter in the caption of his video.
Her TikTok received over 20,000 views, and many people took to the comments to reveal that they accidentally gave their own children babysitter's elbow and how easy it is to cause the injury with simple actions like raising your child's hand.
“My friend accidentally did this with my two-year-old son. He felt so bad! The ER staff are amazing though!” a comment read.
“This happened once when I was holding my little boy's hand and he suddenly fell. Very scary but easy to fix once the ER staff told us how to do it! another story read.
“My son had babysitter's elbow,” a third commenter wrote. “Sometimes he would come out just by trying to hold his hand. “After a bunch of ER visits, I learned how to put it back on.”
“I accidentally did this to my daughter. I was afraid they would take me to jail when we went to the emergency room. Turns out they see it often,” a fourth story said.
