Day 6 of Travel

When entering this hospital one of the first things I learned was they serve eighteen counties. With this being the only hospital that sees children in the area they see many different cultures and levels of income. This also means that a lot of these families must come from a far distance to get medical attention for their children. This can put a strain on the family, because if they have children at home that they need to care for they may have to leave their child in the hospital to be cared for and not be able to be there. I think it is awesome how they have set up the rooms to encourage the parents to stay with their children. They also have rooms in the hospital that the parents can stay in if their child is in the NICU. There is a house for the whole hospital that has a family wing so that parents who live out of county can stay near by to see their child. In my experience with a children’s wing, in clinical at Methodist, only has 5 beds for children and sometimes they do not have patients and actually shut the wing down. I have had the experience of going to OSF and having my child admitted there and I will say that I noticed many similarities. One difference that I noticed and wished that I had experienced is how they do their rounds. They realized how intimidating it can be for a parent to have a group of people come and talk about their child. They made it so that the parents and the care team can sit down and speak only about their child and allows the parent to ask any questions they may have regarding the care of their child. The one thing that stood out to me was the Reuter Mission Children’s Hospital Outreach. This is a place for children to go to get all the care that they need by making sure that they have all services under one roof. The offer services like dental, physical therapy, and have a whole area dedicated for those who many have developmental delays. When we were doing the tour, Ashley was telling us about how they have made it so that can do less invasive procedures. For example, they have goggles that they place on children so that they can watch a movie and hold still instead of placing them under sedation. She said something that really stuck with me, “It is all about the patient, not the pocketbook”. They want to do what is best for the patient and not what will make the most money. The part that had the biggest impact on me was their child abuse/neglect section. When you walk into this part of the building, it is a locked unit, the first thing you see if paint hand prints everywhere. These were in the hand prints of all the victims that had come through the clinic. I was not ready that when we walked into the back where the exam rooms where how many hand prints were back there. It was a very powerful imagine and I just could not imagine how many of these kids that have had to go through this can of pain, and how these are the children who have just gotten help.