Jack Behrend Collection

Teaching Children Poison Prevention

Transcript (Download)

Look what these little kids are doing.

They've got into their mother's purse, they open a bottle of pills and they don't know what the pills are and they think it's candy and if they actually take these pills they're going to get into some real trouble.

And this is one way that children get poisoned.

Dr.

Margolis, do you have many young children who get poisoned by getting into drugs and medicines? This is probably our number one emergency in pediatric practice and with three busy pediatricians we get about one or two calls a day with kids who do get poisoned.

And it's the kind of thing they don't know much about and they're getting in trouble.

And these little kids are about to play doctor and that's no kind of game to play.

Tell your tell me about something that happened to one of your friends.

Can you tell us a story about that poison? Okay well one of my friends were sick and they thought they could keep the medicine all by themselves so they just climbed up into the cover and they opened the cover door and they saw some medicine and then they took it.

And then they saw and the floor and they finally saw it and they rushed it to the hospital and they pumped it out of the atmosphere awful.

Yeah that's one way that we used to do it all the time is to take a tube and put it down in the stomach and then pump all the poison out and sometimes it takes a long time to get to the hospital.

So what we do with all of our patients now we have a better way and every doctor wants their patients to have it and we give this kind of medicine to keep in the house in case somebody gets poisoned and care off.

Serup of Ipacac? Now should all people have this in their home? Ipacac? You can get it from your pharmacist or your doctor.

Is it important to call the doctor first just in case this isn't the right type of poisoning? Yeah because there are certain things that we don't want them to throw up like the strong burning things that you clean the drain with could really kill you if you threw it up.

So that we want them to call first and be sure that they should have it.

We've tried to take it all together different approach that's I think deeper and more significant.

And that is to make something that talks directly to three year olds, four year olds, and five year olds, and see how much they can understand about this.

Let's take a look at this cartoon and see what kind of responses we get from this gang.

Hey, Nifty, it's Mom.

Time to get up.

Gee, Sniffy, what's the matter? Don't you feel good? Hmm, no fever.

Open your mouth.

Sit.

Oh, gosh, that sounds awful.

Boy, you must be sick, Sniffy.

Whenever I get sick, Mommy gives me some medicine.

Let's get you some medicine.

Then you'll feel okay.

Mommy keeps all the medicine up there.

Boy, look at all this stuff.

Here's the aspirin.

Mommy gives me aspirin when I'm sick, and it helps me feel all bit.

Boy, Sniffy, I bet if I give you a whole bunch of them, you'd really feel okay again.

I'm a little less friend -pill.

I can help you when you're ill.

Little kids are not too touched.

They always try to take too much.

The medicine is really strong.

It fights the germs that do the wrong.

But too much medicine would make you sick.

It has to call you doctor quick.

But, Sniffy, I didn't know too much aspirin would hurt you.

Hey, Sniffy, maybe you got a call.

I'll give you some cough medicine.

Excuse me.

I'm cough medicine.

What's more, boys? A one? A two.

I'm cough medicine.

I help you when you cough.

But little kids should keep hands off.

Don't take medicine by yourself.

You just leave us on the shelf.

Okay? I'm a little red too.

I am blue.

We might be dangerous for little ones like you.

We are the medicines you don't know about.

So stay away from us or you better watch out.

A lot of little kids get hurt these way because they can't breed.

What the models say? So if they're tummy feel bad going to your mom or dad.

And that means you and you and you and you.

Wow.

Hey, Sniffy, aren't you sick anymore? I guess he's not sick anymore.

Gee, our cold made Sniffy awful sick.

I'm glad we found out that only mommies and daddy are supposed to give medicine.

Anya, who was sick in the movie? Pissy did that.

Before what was that red -headed boy going to do? Gives me.

Where was the medicine? It clad me.

In the closet? Well, should little boys and girls be giving medicine? No.

Who should give medicine? Your wife is papa.

How old is she? How old are you, Onya? She is old.

Wow.

If she can understand that, you can go home and you can help your little brothers and sisters notice they are out of poison.

Chrissy, I want to ask you a question.

If you and I were both very, very sick with the same sickness and the doctor was going to give us the same medicine.

Would he give us both the same amount? No.

Why not? Because I'm here because of me.

And what was that mean? That means that you would get a big dose, didn't you? That's right.

And, Carol, if I weigh three times as much as you do, and I get one pill, how many pills would you get? Three.

Three times more than you.

That's right.

You're a good mathematician, I know, and you can tell.

But it depends really on how much you weigh, and that's very, very important.

We weigh our patients and see what to give them.

And one thing that we talk about dose, but the doctor has to be sure, he has exactly what he wants in the pill.

And we know for sure that when the drug companies make the pills, that they have just what they're supposed to have in the pill, so it's up to us to know how much to give, because we know for sure what's in the pill.

You have so many medicines, how do you adapt to know how much medicine to give people? I often wonder about that, but the ones that we use all the time we have in our head, and we know how much to give exactly.

We have lots of new medicines and things that we have to know about, so we have a giant size book here.

And in this book there are just thousands of medicines that are listed.

You see all these pages, and you just, everything we want to look up, we can find, and it is a wow.

Now, for instance here, the kids ever know about pinworms, so to make sure we go a little.

If a person who weighs 150 pounds, he gets seven teaspoons, and for you who run around 45 pounds, you'd get two teaspoons.

So you see that we really have to have everything measured exactly and very, very carefully.

Now, give you an idea of something that I think will impress you, is that when we have these little tiny babies that are born too soon, they are called premature babies.

Do you ever hear those? And the premature baby we have to weigh them, and see exactly how much he weighs.

And then depending on how much he weighs, we have to figure out how much milk he can take, and these babies are so small they can't even suck.

So we put a tube down in their nose, and into their stomach and we drip the milk in just the way we should.

And then the medicines that they need to kill the infection and trouble, we measure it drop by drop.

So you can see that we really have to be careful, and people who know what they're doing have to do it, or we can really ruin those babies.

I guess we're losing a friend here.

Let's do a little test with your children.

I've got five different pills here.

They're all different in color and size.

Which one of those, Danny, do you think is the most dangerous one? That big red one.

Which one do you think, Jennifer? A little one.

Well, you don't have to keep them.

How about two, Jennifer? Which one? That one? I don't know.

How can I tell? I don't know.

What's in them? Well, good for you.

That's the right answer.

Really, none of you know what's in these pills, and none of you would really know which is the strongest one.

This one just happens to be an antibiotic, and this one, the two picked is a dangerous one.

That's an arctic and really could put you to sleep.

And he picked a vitamin pill.

So that you see that by looking at them, you don't know, and by the size of them.

You can't tell if they're dangerous or not, because a little one is more dangerous than the big one.

Danny, who does know what's in a pill? I got to.

I want to play another game with your kids.

I have some different kind of bottles here that we use nowadays for safety.

Danny, you see if you can open that one, and you see if you can open that one, and you see if you can open that one, and you can try that one.

Well, I see those, they're kind of the tops camera right off.

Keep turning it, Danny.

See if you can get it open.

See, it just clicks, it doesn't pop open, because that's a safety cap.

I know.

That's right, and that's for what reason? So kids can't get into it because they might be poisonous.

That's right.

You can use that word poisonous like a professional.

Carol, I think you might summarize Mrs.

Simerton as a teacher.

What we want over here today so that we have the teacher's point of view.

It seems quite obvious that very young children are able to understand the concepts of poisoning and drug prevention.

First of all, we know that every family should have syrup of epicach, right, and call the doctor first.

We don't take that until we know for sure it's best, right? You can do it.

That's right, and all families should keep medicine up away from little hands that shouldn't be there, right? Okay, so the important thing is that we know boys and girls are to wait till doctors, till mommies and daddy to give us the medicine.

And that way we'll all stay real healthy and listen to our doctor.

Good idea.

Presented in the interest of boys and prevention through a grant from Mark Davis.

Identifier
F.2004-02-0101
Date Of Production
1976
Abstract
This is an educational film about poison prevention. A doctor and teacher talk to children in a classroom about medicine safety and steps adults can take towards poison prevention. The doctor uses an educational cartoon to teach the children about the dangers of medicine and asks them questions about what they learned.
Log
00:08 - opening credits, two young children empty mother’s purse, opening bottle of pills, about to swallow the pills 00:54 - Carol, teacher, interviews man in classroom with children around a table about poison control, child tells story of friend getting into medicine, had to go to hospital, pump stomach, doctor recommends syrup of ipecac to be kept in home in case of ingestion, call doctor first, FA MS film projector, plays a cartoon about poison for kids in classroom 03:17 - cartoon about child getting medicine from cabinet for sick dog, tries to give dog medicine that mom gives him, medicines sing songs about leaving them on the shelf, kids shouldn’t take pills because they can make kids sick, only mommies and daddies should give medicine 08:39 - Carol and doctor discuss the film with children in classroom to see how much they retained from the film, talk to kids about dosage, types of medicine 11:14 - montage of nurses caring for premature babies in hospital, weigh babies to see how much milk they can take, CU, MCU tubes, baby with tube in nose to feed milk into stomach, doctors have to be careful and measure everything, 11:53 - sets pills on table, asks kids which pills are dangerous, you can’t tell which is dangerous, only the doctor knows 13:00-14:38 - doctor passes out childproof medicine bottles, kids can’t get safety cap off, teacher summarizes that kids can understand medicine safety, all families should keep medicine put away, keep ipecac, wait for parents to get medicine, credits
Run Time
0:14:41
Format
16mm
Extent
540 feet
Color
Color
Sound
Optical
Reel/Tape Number
1/1
Inventory Number
Jack Behrend
Has Been Digitized?
Yes
Language Of Materials
English
Element
Print
Genre
Educational
Form
Announcements
Subject
Teaching
Medicine
Safety
Children
Related Collections
Jack Behrend Collection

Related Places
North America ➜ United States

Sponsor/client
Parke-Davis
American Association of Pediatrics

Main Credits
Gordon Weisenborn Productions Inc. (is production company)
Margolis, Fredrick J. (is producer)

Additional Credits
Gordon Weisenborn Productions Inc. (is contributor)
Margolis, Fredrick J. (is contributor)
Rex Fleming Productions (is animator)

Participants And Performers
Simonton, Carol (is actor)

 
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