Poison+Control


 * If you get food poisoning or something like that, what do you do? You call Poison** **control! It's pretty obvious what Poison Control does... The Minneapolis Poison Control Center is open 24/7, and it's a non-profit organization. [[image:http://www.northernems.org/poison.gif width="257" height="195" align="right"]]** **Here is the Phone and address info:**

//**__Minnesota Poison Control Center Address:__** //
 * Hennepin County Medical Center: 701 Park Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55415**//
 * __Phone__**: Emergency or urgent question : **1-800-222-1222** dialed from Minnesota or **(612) 873-3141 anywhere.**

Remember, this is Poison Control, not the Emergency room so only call if it's related to poison. If not, call 911 - and if it's a car accident... Are you in a car accident? Well if you are.... before 911, call 411! 1-800-411-**Pain!** That's 1-800-411-**Pain! (**Just a commercial i hear every day on the bus......)


 * For My Project I interviewed someone from the MN Poison Control Center. ** //

I basically e-mailed someone named Kirk Hughes (if you're reading this, thank you!) some questions about Poison Control; Here is the e-mail. (note: i edited some misspelled things)

// Hello, my name is Mason, and I am a 7th grader at Hopkins North Jr. // // High School // //. I'm doing a project involving Poison Control for one of my classes. I checked the website and saw that you were the head of the education office, so I was wondering if I could schedule a 10 minute telephone interview or e-mail me the answers of a few questions. If you're busy, it would be nice if you could just email back to answers to the following questions. //

1. ** What is Poison Control? ** Poison Control is a network of 61 accredited poison centers nationwide. The poison center in Minnesota, located in the Hennepin County Medical Center serves all of Minnesota, ND, and SD.

2. ** Does the Minnesota Poison Control receive many calls? about what (pets, children, etc)? How many calls a day? ** The Hennepin Regional Poison Center takes between 225-300 calls a day. about 55% of these are children under the age of 6 y.o. getting into stuff. We do not take calls about animal poisoning as we are not trained in that. Animals are very different than humans when it comes to poisoning

3. ** What are the basic procedures you follow when someone who was poisoned comes to poison control? ** Most people do not come to the poison center. We do refer people into the nearest emergency room if the ingestion is serious enough.

4. ** Why choose Poison Control over the emergency room? ** Great question. We took over 100,000 calls in 2008. Of those about 40,000 were calls from the home setting. We safely treated 85% of those calls in the home preventing needless emergency room visits. A study recently showed that for every dollar spent funding Poison Centers, it saved the general health care system about 23 dollars.

5. W ** hat do you do if you don't know what kind of poison is in the body? ** Another great question. Its not like CSI. Then we have to treat what we see. We can get some blood and urine and test it, but it usually won't tell us exactly what is in the body. A big part of our job is being a detective.

6. ** If a call is from someone's home, do you provide transportation? If yes, what kind? ** No. When some one calls about a possible poisoning we determine if they need to be seen. Sometimes they can be driven in by friends or family. In rare occasions we may tell the caller to hang up and call 911.

7. ** Since Poison Control is non-profit, how do you afford to maintain the building? ** The State and Federal governments provide about 80% of our budget. The HCMC hospital pays for the space and lights. They are proud to have the State's poison center housed in their hospital. We also teach emergency room Doctors training at HCMC how to manage poison exposures. They spent 2 weeks working with us and we teach them.

8. ** Also, if you don't mind, I'd like permission to present your name. ** You may use my name. I am a registered Nurse with a special training in poisons. I am also a firefighter who responds to poisonings in another job. This helps me when other paramedics or firefi

ghters call when they are on the scene of a poisoning

Thanks for your time - Mason.

Did you know?
 * Most poisonings involve everyday household items such as cleaning supplies,
 * medicines, cosmetics and personal care items.
 * 86.7 percent of poison exposures are unintentional.
 * 53 percent of poison exposures occur in children under the age of six.
 * 84 percent of reported adolescent deaths from poison exposure were due to intentional poison exposure such as suicide or drug abuse.
 * Over 60 percent of all poison fatalities occur in adults ages 20 to 49.
 * You can't die of lead poisoning from pencils... Pencils have graphite in them.

For more information on MN Poison, contact Mason Zhang.



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