Blog day 5

6/9/2016  

How did the 130 bed, only children’s hospital in Western North Carolina compare to your previous experiences in health care? Consider how hospitalization effects children and their families. How does this organization apply family- centered care? How does the environment in Asheville, NC compare or contrast to Cherokee, NC? What stood out to you the most today?

Today is day five of our Pediatric Travel course.  I have enjoyed every day that visiting the hospitals and learning about the culture.  Outside of the healthcare facilities we learned about the culture through plays and other presentations.  By coming from a community that’s completely different it’s great to see things that could be possibly implemented in your healthcare.

The Western North Carolina Children’s Hospital is very similar to OSF Children’s Hospital. The units in the PEDs and PICU had the same type of set in both hospitals.  The patient areas of both PEDs and PICU unit have private rooms and allows for enough for parent/family visitors. In this aspect both hospitals have the same type of set-up.  The Neonatal ICU located in Asheville holds up to 51 patients.  Compared to OSF this facility layout is similar to the older version of OSF’s NICU.  At the Asheville location the patient areas are separated by only privacy curtains.  With the new floor at OSF they created several pods that included up to 12 private patient rooms.  This was to better serve the families so that they could spend more time with their infant.  One problem with the open patient area is a patient privacy.  For example if an infant needs urgent care, other families could hear and see everything that is happening with the infant.  Other similarities is feeding prep, patient-staff rounding, flight staff, infection precautions, committees, criteria for gestational admissions, primary care nurse and transition process.  OSF follows the same type of protocol for imaging by having their own x-ray equipment to eliminate possible spreading of infections to the patients. I did notice some differences in between the units.  I noticed that the parents scrubs before entering the unit for 30 seconds and at OSF it two minutes.  I did think it was a great idea to have the sinks low enough for the moms in case they are in a wheel chair unlike OSF.  OSF is equiped to care for cardiac patient whereas the NC facility doesn’t. Medication errors one of the biggest problem in health care.  The NC facility has their staff wear a sash so that others knows to not disturb the nurse when they’re administering medications. Both hospital has similarities and differences and they are making changes to better serve their staff by incorporating family centered care.

Family centered care is applied by the NC facility by providing the family an opportunity to work with the health care team.  The team include the physician, nurse, PA, pharmacist and NNPs that meet in a room to discuss the plan of care with the patient families.  This allows the families to ask questions and offer their input. The families are also provide sleeping rooms and food trays for the families.

The Asheville and Cherokee facility each has their own unique environment that fits their community.  The Asheville facility is a larger city with multiple different cultures and the Cherokees is the complete opposite. The Cherokee hospital was semi quiet and a low flow of patient.  The Cherokee Indian Hospital’s design was unique to the culture and the languages on the sign signs throughout the hospital was Cherokee and English.  The signs at the Asheville hospital was English and Spanish.  Also the Asheville city had more business and much more traffic than the Cherokee.  The Cherokee area is more of relaxed and rural environment, which is the exact opposite of Asheville.

The thing that stood out the most is that in both cities the staff was very helpful and inspiring.  Also by visiting the Reuter Children’s Outpatient Clinic and the Cherokee they both have the same goal to make services available in one central location.