Classifying coughs or difficulty in breathing

After assessing the child, your next step is to classify the cough or difficult breathing to determine the severity of the child’s illness. To classify a child you need the classification table, a section of which is reproduced below (Table 4.1). The treatment column is included – you will be looking at treatment in more detail in Section 4.3 of this study session.

Table 4.1  Classification table for coughs and difficult breathing.