Visiting Mission hospital in Ashville was certainly a great look into the world of pediatric nursing. Having no experience of what OSF St Francis offers as a children's hospital, the units and services provided by Mission gave a glimpse into the dynamic world of pediatric nursing. It was explained to us that Mission has a 16-bed pediatric ICU and 51 beds for a neonatal ICU. To me, walking through the NICU and seeing many of the beds occupied and getting a snapshot at the reasons the infants were there, I was instantly amazed at the work being done.
Also, the hospital (800ish beds in all) has 10 child life specialists on staff for pediatric patients (ICU, NICU, inpatient, ED) as well as children of patients going through more serious health issues. When talking with the child life specialist on the pediatric unit, she explained many of the approaches she can take when interacting with children during their treatment. A play room was shown where she can introduce patients to small items that may be seen during procedures or examinations, as well as demonstrating what the child could expect. Different grounding techniques were explained, which are used to distract a child. The fluorescent lights in this room were covered and made to look like the sky on a partly cloudy day.
During our tour, Ginny (executive director) showed us many things the hospital does to accommodate families. She acknowledged that when a high-risk birth occurs, the infant may be in the NICU for days or weeks while the mother is hospitalized. One thing the NICU staff does while taking care of the infant is filling out a card of basic information, along with a map to baby's location and a picture. This is then given to other family members so they are able to have something while mother is still recovering. Another approach the staff take in patient-centered care is multi-disciplinary rounding. During our tour, many disciplines, including a nurse, doctor, and pharmacist to name a few, were preparing to do a bedside meeting with a pediatric patient. In the ICU areas, this can occur with parents in a separate area away from the patient so as not to scare the child with several people in the room. The staff seemed to be very accomodating for family members during a child's hospitalization. Siblings were even allowed to spend the night in certain instances.
The other part of Mission hospital we toured was the Reuters campus. This was part of the hospital, but was for outpatient procedures. More than one staff talking with us during this visit described the Reuters campus as a "one-stop shop". For example, this building had dental, ortho, imaging, endocrinology, pulmonology, cardiology to name some of the services. There was also an area for pediatric sedation for certain procedures such as an MRI.
After visiting both Mission and Cherokee hospitals, there are some obvious differences. First, Mission is much larger than Cherokee and also takes on all types of patient health issues. Cherokee is much smaller (15 to 20 inpatient beds total), does not have any sort of intensive care unit or labor/deliver, and only provides care (other than the emergency room) to enrolled members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee. Both hospitals, however, seem to do well at clustering the services provided to a single location; Mission having the hospital and Reuters campus for all pediatric outpatient, Cherokee having all services at their hospital.
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