Safe Halloween Research Paper

A Safer Halloween

The act of trick or treating as it is now known today dates back nearly a hundred years in the United States. While it was developed from even earlier customs, the current custom can be best described as people, mainly children, dressing up and knock on strangers’ doors to receive candy and other small treats. While reports of poisoning candy or razor blades in apples remain factually unfounded and the subject of urban legends the night of Halloween now holds other more pedestrian dangers, such as those involving motor vehicle accidents and falls due to ill fitting costumes and poorly lit areas. Due to these dangers along with the fear of more extreme hazards, many parents have chosen to take their children to relatively safe

Downstream interventions are those interventions that tend to happen after the examined event has already occurred. Examples include the care received at a hospital from an illness or damaged body, fire department responding to a fire, or food banks providing food that had previously been donated or otherwise procured. There is little debate that these are all import services required in keeping a community safe. However, if we go the opposite route and look up the stream perhaps we could find a way to stop as many people from getting sick, stop that fire from being set ablaze, or even keep families from needing food assistance in the first place. In nursing, there are quite a few examples of upstream interventions include vaccinations, nutrition, and education. By handing out candy at safer and more well lit areas with candy that was tamper free we were simply providing an upstream intervention. Of course, this may be an overly simplification of the idea, and maybe even be a bit of a stretch, however it was an easy way to introduce the students involved into the thought process related to these subjects in Health Promotion. By intervening in the situation before a problem has actually occurred we can improve the health functioning of our community and keep more people out of the hospitals and clinics. As a foundling nurse I can easily see how this can apply to my future nursing practice. By providing education and support inside the hospital room or out in the community I hope to provide preventative measures to improve the health of all those I care for in my future