PKB handles records about children differently from those about adults. This is to help professionals looking after the safety of children and to comply with local laws enforcing that protection.
We have implemented a number of features specific to children's records:
Enforcing carers' access to a child's record
Automated carer removal - when a young person turns 13, 16 and 18 we will remind you that carers will be automatically removed unless access needs to be retained. A professional must act to keep the carer connected to the record after their birthday if in the best interest of the child.
Restricting registration paths for patients under 16. Patients under the age of 16 cannot register via NHS login or via token registration. If you need an under 16 to register for PKB, they need to be invited by a professional or coordinator via the UI.
Growth charts - these automatically show for records where the child is under 18 years of age.
You can learn more about how to use these features below.
How do I invite a child to register?
Patients under 16 years old cannot register for PKB via NHS login or via token registration. Therefore, if your clinical team requires child patients to register for PKB to manage their own records, they need to be invited to register via email. This can either by done via PKB's user interface (UI) by a professional or coordinator, or by adding them to a team via an HL7 integration with an email address in their record.
How do I enforce access to a child's record?
Certain parties should always have access to the child's record regardless of the wishes of the child or the parents. As a professional you can enforce access for these parties so that neither patient nor carers can stop sharing.
Examples include:
the local family physician and paediatricians
both parents after a divorce
third parties directed by court order such as social workers
To enforce access:
Within the sharing section of the record, click on the 'Team' page of the child and find the team, individual professional or carer you wish to enforce access for. Click 'Edit' next to their name and select ‘Patients & carers cannot edit sharing'
How do I prevent carers being removed automatically when a child turns 13, 16 and 18?
When achild turns 13, 16 and 18, the system will automatically remove a carers' access to the child's record. To prevent this, professionals and coordinators can search for the child in PKB, click on their name and click 'Edit' next to each carer they want to maintain access for. At the bottom of this page, there are boxes labelled 'Maintain access after Xth birthday' - tick this, and enter a reason in the box below. The decision to maintain access and reason provided will be recorded and displayed, even after the birthday. The name of the professional or coordinator that maintained the access will also be recorded and displayed to the user.
How do I add a growth chart to a paediatric record?
When you add a measurement under height or weight for a child a growth chart will automatically appear on the page for that measurement until the child is 18 years old. This allows you to see comparisons to typical growth rates help determine if the child is growing appropriately. The data are from the UK WHO growth charts.
For 24 months and below the charts appear in months.
For 2-18 years the chart appears in years.
