Michelle Tracy, director of Emergency, Trauma Services, Education and Professional Development at MarinHealth, recalls the “anxious mom” who arrived in the ER one day.
In fact, the angst over her child overwhelmed her, enough that Tracy stepped in.
“I said, you have to calm down and go in the (room) calm,” Tracy said. “You can be as nervous as you want out here in the hallway when the curtain’s closed. But when you go in there, you have to be calm and in a good space.”
Another time, a 7-year-old who broke his arm was equally upset that he was missing his school’s end-of-year party. The nurse and her team threw him a party in the hospital room to help lift his spirits.
Both illustrate that when children arrive in an emergency room, they need to be treated in different ways than adults.
Those differences are top of mind for doctors, nurses and the staff who receive and treat seriously ill and injured children in the ER.
And that expert emergency care extends to parents.
One pediatric ER nurse recently recalled a day when she had to remove a mom from a room because her emotions were causing her young teenager’s anxiety to escalate. Another time, a 7-year-old who broke his arm was equally upset that he was missing his school’s end-of-year party. The nurse and her team threw him a party in the hospital room to help lift his spirits.
These are just some of the ways MarinHealth Medical Center and Kaiser Permanente San Rafael Medical Center are helping calm families during the specialized pediatric emergency treatment they provide.
The hospitals’ collective work recently became more seamless after the state approved Marin County’s emergency medical services (EMS) agency’s plan to improve and streamline its pre-hospital services.
“(Children) require specific sizes of equipment for stabilizing airways, administering IV fluids and medications, and ensuring safety equipment for ambulance transportation,” Karrie Groves, a registered nurse and program coordinator with Marin EMS, said in a press release. “Changes in our system were made specifically to address this special population and are in place today.”
Michelle Tracy , director of Emergency, Trauma Services, Education and Professional Development at MarinHealth, said the EMS agency’s state designation has elevated the level of care for local children.
“So now, from the time an ambulance picks up a child until the time the child is discharged, they are receiving specialized pediatric care that they did not have to leave our county to receive,” Tracy said.
Both MarinHealth and Kaiser Permanente San Rafael are certified pediatric receiving centers at the county level. The certification means their individual emergency departments have met the level of appropriate processes, staff, training and equipment needed to treat children when they arrive at the hospital.
In addition, MarinHealth is an “Ouchless ED” through its partnership with UCSF Health, meaning the hospital has child-friendly protocols in place to help relieve children’s anxiety and pain. The hospital received that training back in 2016 through UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, according to Tracy.
The “ouchless” training involved learning to see the emergency room through the eyes of a child in a number of ways, including engaging with children according to their age and level of maturity, avoiding needles whenever possible and using distraction techniques during treatment.
The distraction techniques can be quite simple. Sparkly bubbles are a big hit for refocusing children, and every child who comes into the emergency department gets to pick either a doll or a teddy bear, Tracy said.
“If we need to put an IV in them, for instance, we put it in the teddy bear first. That way they see what it’s going to look like … before we do it to them,” she said. “If we have to put a cast on, we do it to the teddy bear first. And then they can take that home with them.”
When a needle must be used, the area where it will be inserted is numbed beforehand, said Tracy, who has worked for MarinHealth for nearly 10 years.
She noted the emergency department’s new CAT scan and MRI machines are in child-friendly rooms, with lighting that can be changed to show rainbow colors and clouds in the sky.
“We try to make (the visit) as anxiety-free as we can, but it doesn't always work,” Tracy said. “The other thing that we try to strive for is anxiety-free parents.”
Tracy recalls a recent day where the mom of a teenager was so “off-the-wall anxious,” that it was causing the child’s own anxiety to escalate. So Tracy brought the mom outside of the room for a talk.
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Emergency care in Marin County gets a lift for sick children - North Bay Business Journal
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