Tag: Massachusetts General Hospital for Children

The Heroes We Need

Posted in empowerment, Family, hope, Resilience, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

I don’t know what I thought motherhood was going to be like so many years ago, but whatever I thought it was, I was wrong.

I recently ran across this quote from Joan Ryan, author of the book, The Water Giver:

“Motherhood is about raising and celebrating the child you have, not the child you thought you would have.  It’s about understanding that he is exactly the person he is supposed to be.  And that, if you’re lucky, he might just be the teacher who turns you into the person you are supposed to be.”

Of course this reminded me of the quote from Batman, our kids aren’t the heroes we deserve but  the heroes we need.

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to hear the remarkable story of Ario Nour and his family.  Ario had a brain tumor and had to go through a therapy that requires you to remain perfectly still with a mask on your face as you are put on a medical bed in a room, alone, while you have targeted radiation therapy.  It’s called proton beam therapy, and it’s necessary for little kids, to zap the tumor but save the precious brain tissue surrounding it.  As you can imagine, this can be terrifying and many children need anesthesia to undergo this treatment.  The problem is, this isn’t a one time treatment, it’s five days a week for many weeks.  That’s a lot of anesthesia.

Ario, at the age of seven, was very clear when he began his treatment:  he didn’t want anesthesia every day, he would find a way to stay still all by himself.  And he did.  The nurses and social workers were so impressed with him that they had an idea:  Maybe Ario could teach other kids to lay still too.  He tried mentoring another child. It worked.

And this peer mentoring program was born. Kids with brain tumors teaching kids with brain tumors what to expect, what to do, how to lay still.  To practice at home, before the treatment, kids try lying on the couch for increased amounts of time, often with something over their faces, like a washcloth or a spaghetti strainer.  They are allowed to listen to music, books on tape, or something else that will keep them occupied.

Then they get their mask specially made to form fit their face. They get to decorate it, and they use it every time they get treatment.

Other kids, after going through treatment and surviving, went on to mentor other kids.  They are proud to be the experts at something, and to show newbies who are sick and scared that they’ve done it and succeeded. That it was possible.

And the program grew.  It wasn’t just one kid helping one kid. It was a program.  Ario had started a peer mentoring program.

I got to hear him talk at the Family Centered Rounds at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children. Ario has had to go back three times for more treatments.  (Read:  He’s had more than one brain tumor.)  Now he’s in high school, and he’s a normal kid.  Smart, shy, humble.

His parents spoke too.  Not only do they support Ario’s efforts for the peer-to-peer program, but they also support and ride with him for TEAM ARIO, where they ride their bikes 50 miles in the Granite State Quest and raise money to fight pediatric cancer.  Ario and his family have raised over $300,000 and Ario has been honored as one of “The One Hundred.”  It’s a dinner that honors one hundred people at Massachusetts General Hospital who have worked hard to fight cancer.

As I listened to this story, truly an inspirational story, it’s important to remember, Ario isn’t cured. He has recurring cancer.  And his parents have this burden to carry, something no parent ever wants to deal with.  And yet, here they are, parents of a child who started a peer-to-peer program, who’s raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, and yet, who is still chronically ill.

He’s not the hero they deserve, but he may be the hero they need.

Of course, Ario is a dramatic example, but think about your kids and what they have taught you. Have they taught you patience?  Selflessness?  Sharing? Have they taught you how to communicate better or how to fight more fairly?  Mine have.

I’m including the video of Ario here, for you to watch. Grab your tissues.

And take a moment to think about how your kids have changed you for the better.

Family Centered Care is a Partnership

Posted in Advocacy, communication, empowerment, Family, health, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

When you take your child to the doctor, or to the hospital, how much do you know about them?  How much do you influence them?  How much influence do you have over the nurses and the front desk staff, the phlebotomist or the technician?  Have you helped create the design of the location, or the layout of the room?  Have you influenced the way the providers interact with you?

How much influence do you want to have?

When Wendy was first sick, many years ago, we had no experience with doctors or hospitals.  We walked into a brand new situation, filled with well meaning and empathetic providers and a brand new Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.  But the unit was so new that no one knew where anything was, and I remember watching doctors rifle through drawers when Wendy was having a hard time breathing in order to get the right equipment to intubate her (put a breathing tube down her throat.)  I remember when she was breathing on her own again and a resident came in with a weird breathing apparatus that they wanted us to use so that Wendy’s lungs could get stronger, and then after the resident leaving, the nurse whispering that she would get us a bottle of bubbles instead.

I remember in this brand new PICU facility having the problem that Wendy wanted to pee on her own (at the age of 3) and there not being a toilet for her.  And I remember in this nice new facility that the television where we were watching the football game caught on fire.

All of these things were totally normal, understandable, but also preventable things. (Well, maybe not the Television Fire.) If a parent had been around to help with the planning of the spaces, to talk with the residents, to be a part of the process, then maybe some of these snafus wouldn’t have happened.

This is the idea behind family centered care.  The idea that as doctors, and nurses and other staffers, you’re not just treating the illness, you’re treating the person.  And with the case of little kids, you’re not just treating the person, you’re treating the entire family.  Lots of changes have been made since the day we walked into Massachusetts General Hospital almost eleven years ago.  Since our first day, the hospital has instituted bedside rounding, where the doctors go into the room to talk to the patient and the families to make a plan for the day, to see if the family has any questions, and to make things as clear as possible.  The nurses call once you’re discharged to see if you have any additional questions, or might have forgotten something, and to help you set up follow up appointments with your providers.  And you have the opportunity to rate your hospital stay, to mention what has worked and what hasn’t worked.

These are great improvements, real changes to the quality of care and the way parents and patients feel a part of the team.  These have been life changing improvements.

But whet if we could do more?

What if family centered care included the systemic planning of the care to begin with? What if families were asked to meet with providers before care ever took place to make the care itself better, seamless care?

I’ve been working toward this goal for a long time, as a member of the Family Advisory Council at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children.  First, I should tell you about the Family Advisory Council.  The FAC is made up of parents, doctors, nurses, social workers, child life specialists, and administrators.  Its goal is to foster better communication between patients, parents and families, and to make the hospital experience better all around.

One of the things that we do is work on projects that we feel are important, like a pediatric wheelchair pilot program.  The hospital didn’t have pediatric wheel chairs, can you believe it? So a group of concerned parents got together with administrators, went through all of the wheelchairs out there, and with the help of an occupational and physical therapist, chose the best one that would serve the needs of the most kids.  The hospital ordered a bunch and the results have been overwhelmingly positive.

Here are some other things that the Family Advisory Council does:

  •  Meet with new residents the very first day of their residency and talk to them about what it’s like to be parents of chronically ill kids and the importance of communication.
  • Meet with fellows who have been through residency and are now seeing patients in clinic and let them ask us questions about challenging interactions with patients and parents.
  • Host an annual Grand Rounds that usually surrounds communication between patients, parents, and providers.
  • Review public health documents before they go out to the public, to make sure that they make sense, that they have  met their goal of communication.
  • Review plans for new spaces to see if there’s anything that might have been missed (more electrical outlets or hooks for coats for example.)
  • Facilitate workshops on the difference between being “courteous” and “helpful” for front desk staff, because it’s possible to be very polite but not the least bit helpful at all.
  • Interview key new staff members who will interact with families, like nurse managers, etc.
  • Sit on standing committees in the hospital including Ethics, Quality & Safety, Inpatient Satisfaction, etc.

The idea is that if parents are a part of multiple systemic areas of the hospital, that the whole experience, for every patient and family, is better, because parents have been a part of the process.

This has been an evolution, each step was challenging.  Just a few years ago I asked if I could be a part of interviewing for a new position and was resoundingly told no.  Change has also been over a long period of time.  I’ve been the parent of a chronically ill child for eleven years, and all of this work is voluntary, and I have a job on top of that.  Other parents on the FAC have similar stories.  You have to have the will and the drive to make the hospital a better place and you have to find champions within the hospital who are willing to see the change as innovation.  Sometimes, that means being abrasive or sitting through discomfort.  A lot of change relies on trust, and trust needs to be built both on the personal level and on the institutional level.  It’s a partnership.

I’ve put this list here not because I want to trumpet our horn, but because these are concrete examples on how your hospital can move forward toward more patient and family centered care. I learned of a lot of this though an organization called The Institute for Patient and Family Centered Care. They are a non-profit organization that helps hospitals really self-evaluate where they are on the care spectrum and how they can move forward.  They’re having an international conference this summer in Baltimore Maryland.  I’ll be there.  If you come, please come by the poster session and say hi.

In a world where health care is already scary, its really great to minimize problems.  Having patients and parents be a part of the planning for systemic care can help to minimize those problems, but because this hasn’t often been done in the past, it’s often met with resistance.   Work through the resistance.  Sit with the discomfort.  Move forward together with trust.  Become a partnership.

 

 

 

Good Night Lights!

Posted in communication, Compassion, Coordinate, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

There has been a growing movement to bring cheer to sick kids at hospitals.  Not just during the Christmas season, but all year round.

It’s called Good Night Lights.

Picture this.  At 8:30 every night, the city stops and blinks its lights for a minute to say goodnight to the sick kids in childrens’ hospitals. The kids are given flash lights to blink back.  Restaurants and boats participate.  Skyscrapers and police cruisers.  They all blink their lights for a minute to say goodnight.

A few months ago I shared with you the story of the University of Iowa Hawkeyes, how between the 1st and second quarter of their football game, the fans all stand and turn around and wave to the kids in the UI Children’s Hospital.  It’s amazing.  You would think a small thing like that wouldn’t be such a big deal, but the kids LOVE IT.  Their parents LOVE it. Even the staff LOVES it.  Why you may ask?  Hospitals aren’t great places for kids.  They are there because they are sick and sore.  There is very little to look forward to.  This is something special.

That’s just during football season, though.  How many games?  Eight?

Imagine having one thing to look forward to every night, a way to cap off the day and welcome the evening?  And it’s super easy.

I first heard about Providence, Rhode Island, and their Good Night Lights Program on the radio, and I looked it up. Boats and hotels and even restaurants blink their lights to the kids that are sick at the Hasbro Children’s Hospital. You can read about it here.

It has become so popular that it has spread to Orlando, where the city blinks its lights to the Arnold Palmer Children’s hospital.  You can read about that too, right here.

It’s also a thing at Beaumont Children’s Hospital in Detroit.

I want to do this for Boston!

But Boston has specific problems that need to be overcome.  It has a number of childrens’ hospitals.  There’s Tuft’s Floating Hospital.  There’s Mass General Hospital for Children and there’s Boston Children’s Hospital.

pediatric hospitals boston map

How do we triangulate efforts to make this work?

How spectacular would this be if we COULD make this work?

Let’s brainstorm this.

Please leave me a message if you have ideas!

 

 

Happy Birthday Wendy’s Welcome!

Posted in communication, Education, Emergency Department, empowerment, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

It’s been one year since Wendy’s Welcome to the ED has been released.  The video, which was written by Wendy and myself and animated by Payette Architecture Firm, is an introduction to the Emergency Department for pediatric patients.  Wendy is the animated narrator for the nine minute film.  Here are some of the reviews we have received in the last year from the Child Life Specialist who works in the Emergency Department and has collected comments:

11year old – “It let me know about things that were going to happen and that I would have to talk to a lot of people.  My favorite part was learning about the special light in the room.”

Numerous children– Upon entering the exam room “Where is the rainbow light?”

10 year old Chronic patient- “It is cool that a kid, like me, made this!”  I could see his little wheels start turning, wondering what he could create to help other kids too. 

10 year old-  “I know what you do (talking to child life) because I watched the video.” 

15 year old-  “The most helpful part was telling me about all the people I will meet and that I might have to wait a long time”.

4 year old- “ I know I need to change into these (pointing to hospital pajamas). I saw it on TV.”

Paige Fox, R.N., CPEN   “It’s really great to be able to offer our patients a video that teaches them about the emergency department from the voice of a child.  Wendy explaining her own unique experience seems to help kids understand what to expect and make their stay with us go more smoothly.” 

Ari Cohen, MD, FAAP  Chief, Pediatric Emergency Medicine- “It is a perfect example of what can be achieved when good people come together and listen to the ideas of a child.”

Dr. Cohen recently mentioned to me that “Everybody that has seen the video is impressed (meaning ED leadership)and it is being used as an example of what is needed to help the adult patients manage their expectation for their ED visit.” 

The video never would have been possible without the support of the Family Advistory Council at MassGeneral Hospital for Children.  Sandy Clancy, the co-chair of the FAC, helped to keep the project going by setting up committees and getting upper administration to view it and sign off on it.  It was her work in the hospital and Payette’s work outside the hospital that kept the project moving forward, and we are forever thankful to them both.

Wendy’s Welcome has been viewed over two thousand times this year on the Massachusetts General Hospital Website.  Wendy has been interviewed by local news stations and magazines about the video and other hospitals have contacted us for ideas on how they can create their own welcome videos for their pediatric patients.

It’s changing medicine and it’s changing how providers can manage expectations for their patients.  It’s also opening doors for more patient and family participation on the systemic level of health care.  Cooperation between patients and their families with their doctors leads to favorable outcomes across the spectrum.

It has also won three awards.  The Patient’s View Institute honored Wendy last year with the Partners in Care Award and also honored Payette with the Patient Champion Award. In addition, the Institute for Patient and Family Centered Care honored Sandy and me with a Partnership Award for cooperation between patients/families and hospital staff.

What a year!  We are so grateful that Wendy’s Welcome is making such a positive impact on healthcare!

 

 

The Power of Moments: A Review

Posted in Compassion, empowerment, Family, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

The Heath Brothers have released their newest book, “The Power of Moments.”  It discusses how certain moments stay with us through a combination of factors.  Conveniently, the factors form an acronym, EPIC:

ELEVATION:  Defining moments rise above the every day. They’re special.

PRIDE:  Defining moments capture us at our best, moments of achievement or courage.

INSIGHT:  Defining moments rewire our understanding of ourselves or the world.

CONNECTION:  Defining moments are moments we share with others.

They give good examples for each of these areas.  Then they challenge you to make more of your interactions moment-worthy.  How do you break the script of the every day?  How do you build in moments that are extraordinary for others?

I’ve never read a Heath Brothers book before, but I enjoyed this one.  Of course, I am biased.  One of this blog’s stories is in the book, the very last story in the very last chapter.  It talks about a moment when Wendy had been in the hospital for many months and two nurses decided on the day that there was a huge snowfall, that they would team up to figure out a way to get Wendy some snow.  This was complex because at the time, she was in heart failure and had a severe water restriction, and of course she was going to eat some of that newly fallen snow.  So, the nurses scooped up some snow, measured it, melted it, measured it again, made a calculation, and then went out into the snow AGAIN and got more fresh snow to bring into Wendy’s room. You can read my blog post about it here.

Dan Heath shared with me while we were talking on the phone, that not only was it a wonderful, defining moment for Wendy and our family, but also for the nurses as well.  It was a tangible thing they could do to bring joy to a little girl from Vermont who had been in the hospital for months.  It was connection.  It was elevation.  It was insight.  It was pride.  And it didn’t cost a penny, just some time.

I really enjoyed reading the book, and I’m so grateful to the Heath Brothers for including our story in it.  One day an advance copy just arrived in the mail, with their special thanks. It is unlikely I will ever meet them, but it’s really cool that our story, Wendy’s story, is now in a book.

You can purchase the book today as it has just been released.  If you read it, please let me know what you think of it.  Here is the link to the book on Amazon.

Impatient, Empowered

Posted in Advocacy, communication, Compassion, empowerment, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Yesterday, Wendy received the Patient View Impact Award, the only national award given to patients who make a personal impact in medicine. Payette was given a special award too, for being a champion of the project.  (In reality, without them it wouldn’t have been possible. )  The awards were given by the Patients’ View Institute, a non-profit organization committed to organizing and amplifying the patient voice, so we can have more impact on the quality of care we receive.

The Patients’ View Institute collects patients’ stories, organizes them, and allows them to be viewed by others going through similar circumstances.  It also awards a few great stories once a year at the annual meeting of the Leapfrog Group.  The Leapfrog Group is a non-profit committed to transparency in medicine.  Hospitals send them their quality and safety reports, and Leapfrog gives them an A-F grade based upon their reporting. The best hospitals are brought to this annual meeting to receive their award.

So, Wendy was given an award in front of representatives of the best hospitals for quality and safety in the nation.  Think on that for a second.  If you could tell three hundred people who have the power to change the day-to-day  operations of a hospital, if you had their undivided attention, what would you say to them?

Here’s what struck me about the day.  Everyone in the room was trying to make healthcare better.  Everyone was worried about the cost, the consistency, and the safety of healthcare.  But most of the people were looking at it from the institutional side of it, the bean-counting side, if you will.

Wendy’s story was one of a few individual stories of patients who were empowered to make change in the medical world.  The most prominent story, however, was the keynote speaker, Epatient Dave, who talks about patient engagement and empowerment.  His TED talk is one of the most viewed talks in history.  I highly recommend it.   He empowers patients to know their health history, and to connect with each other.

Another parent was there winning an award, named Becky White, is also the parent of a medically complex child.  Not 0nly did she go back to school to get her nursing degree, but she went back again to get her MBA.  She stressed that as a parent of a medically complex child, that she needed to know how to speak three languages:  the language her child would understand, the language the medical world would understand, and the language that the business world would understand.  She invites hospital administration to round with her when she is taking care of children so that they understand what is necessary for caring for a medically complex child.

Another parent, Liz Minda, is an advocate for her child who has had over 11,000 seizures in her lifetime.  Liz advocates for medical marijuana, and has spoken to media and legislatures about its impact on her daughter’s health.

You can read about both of these women here in the PVI press release.

It took me some time to process the whole day.  There was so much information, so  much intention by everyone in the room to improve health care, that it was hard to keep it all straight.  I took copious notes.

What struck me about the other patients and parents, though, was that they were both empowered and impatient.  They were there because they were creating change.  Wendy and I were there because we wanted change too.  The kids in these stories are extreme cases, but they don’t have to be, they don’t have to be the kids who are frequent fliers in the hospitals.  I think, though, that the amount of time our children spend in the hospitals make us as parents want to make the entire medical experience better.

Some people write books about their experience; some write blogs.  Some people speak at TED talks.  Some people create cartoons.

What can the average person do?  That’s what I was thinking about last night. Does it have to be such a grand gesture?  Of course not.  Those things get noticed, surely, but lots of good can be done without a media blitz surrounding it.

I came to this idea of the Patient and Family Advisory Council.  It is a council at hospitals that really bridges the divide between patients (or families) and providers.  Let’s say a family has an experience at a hospital and they know a way that it can be improved.  For example, a family notices that there are no pediatric wheelchairs.  Where can they go to get them ordered?  The Family Advisory Council.  A family notices that the pain medication that was prescribed in the Emergency Department doesn’t transfer up in the orders when they reach the floor.  Who can they tell?  How do they create the change?  The Family Advisory Council can point them in the right direction.

When Wendy and I wrote the story for the Emergency Department Cartoon, I brought it to the Family Advisory Council to help me figure out what to do with it.  The co-Chair of the FAC, Sandy Clancy, helped me to create a committee of people who needed to see it to approve the content, including doctors, nurses, social workers, child-life specialists, psychologists, you name it.  There would have been no way for me to know whom to contact or how to do it.

Likewise, the Family Advisory Council is a resource for the hospital as well.  Different departments come to us for advice about any variety of things.  New blueprints for new departments are brought to the FAC to see if they have any suggestions.  FAC members review and edit information that is given to the public. Parents speak to residents on their first day in their new job about the importance of bedside rounding.  We even sponsor a Grand Rounds every year about family centered care.

I wrote a piece about family advisory councils for Courageous Parents Network a few months ago.  You can read it here.  (It lists me as Casey Daniels, though.  🙂

If you want to be a part of a Family Advisory Council, contact your hospital and see if they have one.  Usually there’s an application process.  If your hospital doesn’t have one, consider starting one.  The Institute for Patient and Family Centered Care has created a whole series on how to start an FAC in your area.  You can look at their information here.

In conclusion, though it’s not exactly important what I said at the conference with 300 quality and safety people in it, since I posed the question, I will tell you what I decided to say, concerning the cartoon.

I said, since we all arrived by airplane and every airplane in America has a safety introduction before they take off, everything from fastening your seatbelt to what to do in the event of a water landing, why don’t we have introductions to every Emergency Department in America, when people are sick and scared and hurt?

Though it may not change anything, hopefully it gave people something to think about on their flight home.

 

 

 

 

 

You Are Here! With Wendy!

Posted in Compassion, coping, Education, Emergency Department, Resilience, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , 8 Comments

The Cartoon has been completed and sent to the hospital!

(If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you should read the #projectW blog post first.)

After over two and a half years, through multiple drafts, multiple meetings, and multiple mediums, we have a finished product that will (hopefully) benefit young children and their parents.

Picture this.  Your kid gets hurt, to the point where you need to go to the emergency room.  Your child is in pain, and is scared, and is nervous.  Do you know what is going to happen?  Probably not, because not many people spend a lot of time in the Emergency Department.  So you as a parent are also stressed and wondering what is going to happen.  Most stress in the hospital happens in the waiting room of the ER.  So how can that be alleviated?

Wendy and I wrote this little story with that in mind, giving an introduction to the Emergency Room and to the hospital in case the child gets admitted.  It runs about nine minutes long, enough time to get settled and have your questions answered.  It also gives you some suggestions on how you can prepare yourself for when you meet the doctors.  You can write out what hurts, when it started, what you’re worried about, how you feel, and it will get the conversation going more quickly.

So it’s designed to alleviate stress and foster communication.  Imagine if all hospitals worked on ways to incorporate these things into their care scheme.  We had whole teams on this project, both in the hospital and at Payette, an architectural firm that specializes in hospitals.  In the hospital, the Family Advisory Council brought together a group of experts to comb through the script.  There were doctors, nurses, social workers, and child life specialists, who all added their advice and counsel.  Then at Payette, there was another whole team of creative people who put it together.  There were animators and musicians, people who were good at the storyboarding and composition.  There were people who spent Saturdays recording Wendy’s voice and teaching her some elocution so she could enunciate well.  They made sure they included Penny in one of the pictures (that’s Penny getting the thermometer over her forehead!) and they included Wendy’s stuffed animal Teddy who has been through all of the hospitalizations with her.

And get this, all of these people did this out of the goodness of their hearts.  Nobody was paid for a moment of any of this, through months of preparation, meetings, and work.

They did it because they thought it was important.

Think about it another way.  Every time you go on an airplane, you get instructions on what is going to happen during the flight, including what might happen in an emergency.  Do you get the same instructions when you go into the Emergency Room?  Why not? Wouldn’t you feel better, as an adult, if you did get some instruction or information while you were waiting to be seen?

Now imagine how much scarier it must be for a kid to be hurt and worried.

Here is my hope.  My hope is that this post and video go wild, that it helps thousands of sick and scared kids, that it inspires other hospitals to do the same thing.  I hope it encourages collaborative efforts because they are important, not because someone is going to get all the money or all the credit associated with it.  My hope is that there are fewer sick and scared kids, but when they arrive to Emergency Departments around the country that they will be given an introduction on what they can expect so they won’t feel so lonely and vulnerable.

Please watch this video.  Please think how many people put their hearts into this production.  Please share it widely.

https://vimeo.com/186454486

Thanks to everyone for your support through these efforts, including your kind words and suggestions.  Thanks for not letting me give up on it.

I asked Wendy what she thought about the whole thing, the more than two years, the different iterations, the meetings, the pictures, the recordings, and she just said, “I think it’s pretty cool and I think it’s going to help a lot of kids.”

She said it better than me, and in fewer words.

What If I Don’t Know the Answer?

Posted in Advocacy, communication, Compassion, Education, Family, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

For a number of years now,  I have had  the honor of speaking to the brand new residents at our hospital.  These are often young doctors who likely graduated from Medical School, top of their class, in May.  I speak to them sometime in the third week of June, giving them enough time to pack all their worldly goods and travel to their placement between graduation and new residency.  They begin seeing patients sometime around July 1st.

A large proportion of these doctors do not have children of their own.  So they are experts on the anatomy and physiology of a child, but not necessarily experts on how to talk to them, or how to talk to their parents.

I get to speak to them on their first full day.   It says a lot about the administration of Massachusetts General Hospital for Children, that on the first day of the new residency, these new doctors speak to parents.  It sets the tone that the hospital is committed to family centered care.  It means that they are serious about good communication between doctors, patients and parents.

Every year, a few of the parents from the Family Advisory Council go together to this rather informal discussion.  We all introduce ourselves by way of our child’s illness.  We are what is known as “frequent fliers” in the hospital world, or kids  who are often in the hospital.

On this day, the first day of residency, we talk about bedside rounding.  As its name implies, bedside rounding occurs around the child’s hospital bed.  Everyone comes in and has the discussion together:  doctors, the child’s nurse, a pharmacist and the family.  The lead resident gives an introduction about the child and and her illness, and then discusses what they have done and what they need to do before discharge can happen. They will often discuss specific lab and test results.  Then they make a plan for the day, ask if there are any questions, and then move on to the next kid.

But it is a very different experience when doctors are talking among themselves and when they are talking to families.  Families haven’t gone to medical school, they don’t know the lingo.  They don’t know that afebrile means that the child doesn’t have a temperature.  They don’t know that emesis is vomiting. They don’t know what the thousands of maddening acronyms mean.  So the residents, who have spent all of this time learning all of these official terms, need to rethink the way that they report when the family is there.

The new doctors also have to deal with the fact that the parents, normally the ones who are in charge of every action and detail of their child’s life, are feeling helpless and scared.  That the child in the bed is also feeling that way, along with being in pain or discomfort.  The terms of the situation make matters worse.  No one is at their party best, so to speak.  Parents deal with this in different ways. Some parents don’t want to know anything technical, they just want the doctors to fix it as soon as possible so they can leave. Some parents want to know everything, down to every acronym and decimal point, so they can figure out what is going on.   Sometimes parents are hostile or sharp with the doctors as a defense mechanism.  Sometimes they burst into tears.  You never know what you’re going to get.

The temptation is to race through the bedside rounding, to cut corners, or to not answer all of the questions that the families have.  After all, these doctors are in charge of multiple children, multiple illnesses, hundreds of balls in the air on any given day.

We, the parents, are there to say that bedside rounding is important, even when it’s uncomfortable, sometimes especially when it’s uncomfortable.  We are a team, all of us, and we all need to be on the same page.

A team relies on trust.

Which brings me to my favorite question, that is asked every year:

“What if I don’t know the answer?”

These new doctors are used to knowing all the answers.  They are used to being the smartest person in any given room. They have encyclopedic memories.  They have been tested and they have been victorious.  But what happens if, for some reason, they are caught off guard and don’t know what the answer is to a question that a parent or a patient asks?

They are afraid that they will look like a fraud.

But who in the world knows all the answers anyway?  That’s not why they are there.  They are there to find the answers. They might not know them all.  And if a team is built upon the mutual trust of the participants, it is up to the doctor to say, “I don’t know the answer to that, but I will find out and get back to you.”  And the key is to follow through and do that.  They will win the respect of the family if they make that combination of confession and commitment to the truth.

It’s important to say one more thing, and we as parents say this every year too.  When we are all together in the hospital room, we are modelling behavior for our children. We are showing our chronically ill children, who will one day grow up and have to speak to doctors all on their own, how to be empowered to do so.  We are showing them that trust in medicine is important, that integrity is important, that bonds form when everyone is present in the discussion.

It is important to parents of chronically ill children to address the issue, try to fix it, with honesty and integrity, and to model this behavior for our children.  If you think about it, that’s the way life should go, but especially within the confines of a vulnerable situation like a hospital room.  Everyone needs to feel heard, everyone needs to feel respected, and great things can happen.

 

 

 

 

#projectW

Posted in Advocacy, communication, Compassion, Education, Emergency Department, Resilience, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

This is a story of determination and luck.  And maybe some magic.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who had a lot of medical problems and saw the inside of a hospital for  many, many days.

She got sick, then a little better, then a LOT sicker, then better, better, a little better, and then better still.  But she still went into the hospital from time to time, by way of the Emergency Department.  It’s just the way life was for this little girl, and it wasn’t fair, but it just was.  It was nobody’s fault.  She made the most of it, by making routines of walking her mommy to the door every night with her father, through the halls of the hospital, to the farthest building that was still connected, and then going to see the fish in the PICU, and coming back and reading Harry Potter until they fell asleep.

She learned how to flush her IV lines and when unsuspecting people would come in, she would squirt them with the flushes she kept in her bed.  Then she would laugh maniacally.

She and her parents would set up Christmas Lights at night, and then take them down during the day so they didn’t get yelled at.

She would ride on her IV pole when no one was looking.

She would have her toenails painted by her favorite nurse.

Sometimes she would sneak downstairs with her mom and get a hair cut, or go to the chapel, or go to the gift shop to get a prize.

That’s when she was feeling well, which wasn’t all the time, but she and her parents made the best of the times that they had when she was feeling better and in the hospital.

All together, she spent over two hundred days as an inpatient at Massachusetts General Hospital.

She didn’t really know it, but she was becoming AN EXPERT at being a hospital patient.  And she knew a lot more than other kids about it.

********

Her name is Wendy, and she’s my daughter.  While this was happening, she was between the ages of 3 and 5.  Now she’s twelve.

A few years ago a neighbor called us.  You see, both of her kids were in the hospital.  One was an expected surgery and one was an emergency appendectomy.  The mom called us a few times to ask questions about what to bring, what to do, what to expect.  Wendy and I answered her questions together.  We realized together that we knew a lot of things that average people don’t about hospitals and how to handle them.  We decided to write a story about our experiences.

The story was designed to help kids who were waiting in the Emergency Room, and were probably in pain, and likely nervous or scared.  If those kids asked their parents what to expect, a lot of the times, their parents didn’t know how to answer and were worried themselves.  Wendy and I thought that together we could help both the kids and their parents.  Once we were finished, we wondered what in the world should we do with it now?

We decided to give it to the hospital, and find a way to get it published.  We thought it would make a great coloring book.  Well, like many things in a hospital, it had to have a committee, so everyone could look at it.  So with the help of the chair of the Family Advisory Council, a committee was formed, with doctors and nurses, and social workers, and child life specialists, and a few other people.

They said they loved it….but could we change it?

So we did.  We made it more technical, explaining more and more things.  But we hated it because it didn’t feel like Wendy’s story anymore.

The committee hated it too.  So we started all over again, and this time made it more personal.  That felt better.  We had a good working draft and it was approved.  Yay!

Then….tragedy struck.  The Emergency Department decided that when it went through renovations that it was going to go paperless.  So no book.

What do we do now?.  Then I thought maybe we could get it animated.  But money was a problem, I didn’t have any to put toward a project, and so I looked into an internship at the hospital for a student of computer animation.  We made a job description, we found a mentor at the hospital, we filled out all the paperwork.

We got an intern!  Yay!

But, then tragedy struck again.  It was too much for the intern to handle, too big of a project.  He didn’t tell us until the internship was over that he basically had nothing to show for his time.

And I thought, this is it, this is the end, after two years.  How in the world am I going to tell Wendy?  I had run out of options, and I did something I rarely ever do.  I felt self-pity.  I was so unbelievably sad.  I wrote about it on facebook, saying just that.  I had run out of ideas and I was going to have to give up, something I hated.

LOTS of people responded with ideas.  Lots of people gave names of people who could help.  One friend asked for the transcript, so I sent it to him.  Then Stu said, “Would you mind coming in tomorrow to talk to my team about it?”

And I said Yes, thinking that I was going to have to pitch the story to this group of people in an architecture firm, so I planned what I was going to say and I went to the meeting.

That’s when something magical happened.

The had already decided!  They were going to animate it!

Yay!  Again!

And so we have been working on this project with them for almost six months.  Wendy has given her voice to the story, and she will be the narrator outside of the scenes. The Architecture firm, Payette, has been to the hospital to take pictures of the rooms. They have drawn a cartoon Wendy.  They have recorded her voice.  It should be mostly ready in a few weeks.  And I just can’t help but marvel at it, at all the kids it’s going to help.   It’s right now being called #projectW.   The idea now is going to look like this:

A child and his/her parent come to the emergency room.  They go through triage, and are sent to the pediatric portion of the ED, a separate place.  While they are waiting for treatment, they will be given an Ipad with the story that they can watch, which will be about 10 minutes long.  Wendy will tell them lots of what they can expect.  It will be her person who will reduce their anxiety.  It will be the pictures that Payette has drawn that will show them the way.

I just can’t wait the few more weeks until this is finished!!!!  Those of you who know me have been bored probably to tears hearing me talk about it, worry about it, work on it, or explain the many iterations.  I am sorry if that has happened.  But I promise that when it’s over, it will totally be worth it.  I just cannot wait!

Wendy is totally taking it in stride, like she becomes a cartoon character every day.  That’s just the way she is.

Like I said, determination, luck, and magic.

Photo:  the first working cartoon drafts of Wendy’s character.

 

 

Find Your Tribe

Posted in Advocacy, diabetes, Resilience, transplant, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

It’s important to find groups and organizations who support you in your journey as a caregiver, both in the short term, and in the long run.
Wendy had a strange illness. It wasn’t a genetic defect, or cancer, or cystic fibrosis. She was born completely healthy. Her illness was a result of a bacterial infection that turned into a syndrome. As a result, there weren’t a lot of support or advocacy groups out there.
Advocacy groups are great. They are a clearing house for information , because usually the thing you worry about for your child is a normal worry associated with that illness. There are so many advocacy groups out there for cystic fibrosis, heart disease, low birth weight, cancer of all kinds, food allergies Crohn’s disease, kidney disease, you name it. Many times you can find a local chapter of your needed advocacy group nearby and it helps to talk to people who are going through exactly what you are going through.
We found that though the syndrome didn’t have an advocacy group, that there were other avenues we could travel down for the same kind of support. One was STOP foodborne illness, which is an advocacy group that supports people who have been struck by illness associated with food, like e-coli or salmonella. They do work in the legal sphere trying to cut down the use of antibiotics in factory farming, but they also support people who have been struck down by the illnesses they are trying to prevent.
We also turned to the diabetes advocacy groups. As a result of her illness, Wendy’s pancreas works at 15%, which means that she needs insulin on a daily basis to digest her carbs and sugars. She’s neither a type 1 or a type 2 diabetic, but she has the same concerns as a diabetic kid. She feels isolated and left out as a result of her illness, because she’s the only one who has to check her sugar, count her carbs and give herself insulin. She LOVES being in a room where everyone else is doing those things too. She loves to go to diabetes camp as a result. She loves to belong to a bigger group.
We also are a part of the transplant community. This one is a little more ambiguous. It’s multi-age, and multi-organ because there aren’t many people in the world who have organ transplants. I like this group because it’s amazing to sit in a room full of people who wouldn’t otherwise be there except for the generosity of a donor or a donor’s family. And as a result, the people who are the recipients just radiate gratitude. They know they’ve been given a second chance in life. They know what’s important.
Part of being in groups like these isn’t just receiving their collected wisdom, it’s also about participating and giving your energy as well. It’s just as important to give back, once you are in a place to do so. Obviously you can’t give back when you are in a time of crisis, nor does anyone expect you to. But once you’ve calmed down, it’s important to give back to an organization that you have used as a support and an anchor. I’m not just talking about money, but manpower as well. Wendy does a run every year to raise money for her diabetes camp, The Barton Center. It’s a summer camp dedicated to diabetic girls, with nurses in every cabin. It emphasizes self reliance and not putting barriers on yourself. It brings in speakers who are both diabetic and amazing, like triathletes or ultra marathoners. It shows the girls that anything is possible, and diabetes is just a part of their identity, not their whole identity.
Wendy also is going to participate in the American Transplant Games this year, in Cleveland Ohio. She is going with Team New England and she is going to participate in both the swimming and the track and field events, and she’s going to kick butt if I do say so myself. But more importantly, Wendy’s participation and the participation of all of the transplant recipients showcases the worth of organ donation. When you see all of the people who have been touched by organ donation, in one convention center, it is a very powerful thing.  I’m sure that I will be blogging from there in June.
It’s not just about joining a group, and I can’t stress this enough. As a parent of a chronically ill kid, your time is stretched too thin already. It’s about finding meaning and purpose in a group, and it might be a group that isn’t centered around your child’s illness, exactly, but will still do a world of good.
The best thing that I do is sit on the Family Advisory Council at Massachusetts General Hospital. It’s a body that is half parent and half provider-staff. We meet once a month and help to make the hospital better for all children. Often we are a resource to proofread new source material for the public, give feedback on architectural designs for new departments, or run workshops on staff helpfulness. We speak to new residents about what it’s like to be the parents of kids who are in the hospital a lot. We sit on hospital wide committees for quality and safety, ethics, or inpatient satisfaction. We even sponsor a Grand Rounds once a year that focuses on family centered care. It not only improves care for every child through fostering communication between provider, parent and patient, but it makes the hospital better for MY daughter, every time. I know more of the doctors, more of the nurses. At the very least the residents and fellows have all seen my face, and I know a lot of the attending physicians by name. It keeps a connection so that the next time we go in to the hospital (because there will always be a next time) that we’re not met with brand new faces in a large city hospital. I honestly think it’s some of the best, most measurable, work I do on a macro scale.
Another benefit of being on the FAC at Mass General is that I also come in contact with parents just like me who are not only concerned, but passionate about making the hospital better, who come to the work not out of anger because of the hand they have been dealt, but constructively taking their experiences and working with doctors, nurses, and staff to collectively make the hospital stay better. Honestly, sometimes I look around that room and marvel, the men and women sitting at the table could be considered “professional hospital parents” because their child (or children) have been inpatients so often, some of whom have passed away as a result of their illnesses, and yet they choose extra time to be there, in the evening, to work out the snags and make the hospital better. I take strength from their strength.
Being the parent of a chronically ill kid is isolating, but there are places of refuge. Advocacy groups, hospital committees, or even online groups. But don’t just be a bystander, don’t just be a taker. Give back. Your contribution not only makes the organization stronger, but makes you stronger as well.

Find your Tribe.

Everyone benefits, and as a result, there are flashes of brightness in the dark. Together you can find a way to make your child’s illness better, and hopefully the experiences of other families better too.