September 2007
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Mad Fish Mud just one example of corporations' growing support for Children's Hospital Boston
Have you had Mad Fish Mud with Caramel Bait yet? The fishing-inspired ice cream flavor was created by Brigham's and Charlie Moore the "Mad Fisherman" to raise funds for Children's? Proceeds from every pint sold and coupon book sales will benefit the Children's AIDS (CHAP) and Boston HIV Adolescent Provider & Peer Education Network Services (HAPPENS) programs. Moore, a fishing guru with shows on NESN and ESPN, hopes to raise more than $50,000 for Children's.Those not interested in ice cream may be looking to buy or sell their house. Fars Realty Group will donate $100 per transaction completed and $200 per transaction completed when the client is a Children's employee. For more information, please contact Lisa Miracle at 978-870-8274.
Brigham's and Fars Realty Group are examples of several companies who've made helping Children's their business. Here are some others:
Olympia Sports raised $61,338 for Children's Brain Trauma Clinic through a five-week in-store donation program. Customers in Olympia Sports' 155 stores across eight states pitched in to help prevent and treat childhood brain injuries.
Shreve, Crump & Low raised more than $10,000 for Children's by donating 10 percent of the proceeds from its grand opening celebrations to the hospital. America's oldest jeweler recently renovated its historic flagship location at 440 Bolyston Street and opened a store in the Mall at Chestnut Hill.
New England companies are showing they care for kids’Äîyou can, too, by supporting these promotions. And if you're affiliated with a company looking to develop your own partnership with Children's, contact Jim O'Malley at 617-355-2975 or jim.omalley@chtrust.org.
Since 2002, more than $7.5 million was raised for Children's through the Children's Miracle Network (CMN). To celebrate, Children's recently hosted CMN's Board of Trustees and executives from key CMN partner corporations such as Wal-Mart, Disney, ACE Hardware, RE/MAX and others. Guests enjoyed both clinical and research tours and dinner at the Karp Family Research Building. The Children's Miracle Network helps save and improve the lives of children by raising funds for 170 North American children's hospitals.
Birthday donations from the heart of the Kelly Family
Ryan Kelly received life-saving cardiac surgery at a week old, two years ago. Each year, instead of birthday gifts, the Kelly family asks family and friends to donate books and games they can bring to the cardiac intensive care unit and the Cardiology floor on the anniversary of the surgery in the summer. His parents also donate blood each trip.Team Disney
"I'm going to Disney World!" That's what you'll tell your friends and family if you sign up to run the Disney half or full marathon as part of the Miles for Miracles program. Agree to raise $1,500 for the hospital, and Children's will give you access to an experienced coach, a personal Web page and a high-quality running singlet. It's the perfect way to help Children's patients and enjoy Walt Disney World at the same time. Half marathon: Saturday, January 12 Full marathon: Sunday, January 13 For more information on Disney and other races in our running program, visit www.childrenshospital.org/run.Security launches new bike unit
Members of the Security Department recently completed Brookline Police-sanctioned bike patrol training and you'll be seeing them around the campus this fall. The four members of the unit will be on patrol on day and evening shifts. The bike security officers are patrolling for suspicious persons, those needing directions or other assistance, criminal acts, such as bike or vehicle GPS thefts, as well as being a recognizable presence around the campus. The bike patrol will be coordinating with other area institutions that already have a bike patrol programs (Harvard Medical School, Beth Israel Deaconess and the Boston Police).Stopping violence with art
The Division of Gynecology, the Center for Young Women's Health and the Division of Adolescent Medicine sponsored an Art and Poetry contest and a Violence Awareness Event August 23. "There's an incredible amount of violence in the lives of patients, urban youth and in the media," says Emily Wolfe Roubatis, an intern in the Department of Gynecology and Center for Young Women's Health. "We wanted to create a positive outlet to talk about these things and link young people to the hospital and community organizations."Advocacy for Women and Kids in Emergencies (AWAKE), Grub Street, Inc, Boston's independent writing center, and employees from the Martha Eliot Health Center attended the event. Here, Roubatis and Roxane Gardner, MD, MPH, Department of Gynecology, stands with younger art category winner, Te Jay Bernardo and older poetry category winner, Nicole Beatty. Both were awarded gift certificates donated by the Artist and Craftsman Supply Stores. Other winners received membership to the Institute of Contemporary Art and a one-on-one workshop with Ethan Gilsdorf, a freelance writer.
Matthew Howley Exemplar 2006
When I accepted a position as a registered nurse on the Critical Care Transport Team at Children's Hospital Boston, I was both excited and nervous. I was excited at the fact that I had reached my long-term goal in nursing, which was to work as a transport nurse. I also was nervous about the magnitude of responsibility that the job would entail. Throughout my orientation, I was exposed to many new experiences. From observing in the cardiac ICU to the newborn intensive care units, it showed me the multiple dimensions that this team has to respond to. One of the classes I had to attend, much to my dismay at the time, was PERCS. PERCS, or the Program to Enhance Relational and Communication Skills, was an all-day class where I was put into different patient scenarios. The focus was on how to deliver difficult news to patients and family members using professionalism and empathy. This is an area that I tried valiantly to avoid in the past. Little did I know that this one-day class would become so valuable to me as a critical care transport nurse.It was a Saturday night and I was at orientation. As usual, I was running on the later side of on-time. I arrived to a call waiting for us at Brockton Hospital. I, of course, caught a good natured ribbing from my team for being "on time." As we headed out, we were all but a mile away from Children's. One of my teammates got a telephone call. He alerted the Paramedic from Cataldo ambulance that we were being diverted on a priority one response to Winchester Hospital. All we knew was there was a 14-day-old in the ER in cardiac arrest. We quickly talked about differential diagnoses and before we knew it we arrived.
As we walked through the doors, it was obvious where our patient was. Almost every staff member of the ER was packed into that tiny little room. It was as if the seas were parting when we entered the room. I felt as if an overwhelming sigh of relief came across the room when we arrived. Amid the beeping of the monitors and the physician trying to maintain crowd control and volume, I saw the mother out of the corner of my eye. She was being consoled by the patient's aunt and a social worker. My teammates immediately jumped into action in caring for the patient. I knelt down and shook the mothers hand and introduced myself to her. As many thoughts were going through my head on the condition of the patient, I thought to myself, 'Someone has to tell this mother about the condition of her daughter that she just brought into this world two weeks ago.'
Immediately and effortlessly, the interactions from the PERCS program entered my head. I slowly explained to the mother what was happening and what we were going to do for her daughter. I paused frequently to let mom talk or even just cry. She understood the seriousness of her daughter's condition. The patient's aunt sitting next to her kept reiterating that things were going to be okay. In the background, I noticed the father at the end of the stretcher saying, 'Come on little lady,' to his almost lifeless daughter.
As we returned to Children's, I updated the patient's father on her condition during the transport. He kept on saying the phrase, 'Come on little lady.' The mom arrived shortly thereafter and they thanked all of us after we delivered their daughter to the NICU. As I stood there in total disbelief over what happened, I thought, 'What did I do? Did my teammates do more than I did?' Then I realized that for this particular patient, my job was to be there for the parents of this child. I was to help them understand the grave condition of their child, and to listen to them. I feel now that if I hadn't attended the PERCS program, my interaction with this family would have been extremely different. I probably would have directed someone to assist me in delivering this news. I realized that the one eight-hour day when I sat in that room gave me a valuable learning tool that no textbook could ever offer.
CLINCAL EXEMPLAR Kristen McGrory Staff Nurse I 8 South
I walk into the large unit on 8S wondering what the assignment sheet will bring to me today. Possibly an OR case, or maybe a pre-op newborn transferred from an outside hospital. I glance at the sheet searching for my name and find it next to one patient I had been hearing about for weeks. I took a deep breath and headed for bed space 22.Meghan would be my patient for the day and I already knew that she wasn't always nice to the nurses caring for her. She was a Fenestrated Fontan that had developed Euings Sarcoma a couple of years ago and now it had returned.
Being in her early 30s, she was definitely older than the population that many of the other nurses on our unit, or I were used to caring for. Unlike the majority of our patients, Meghan was involved in her care, understanding much of what was going on and what was happening to her. She wasn't a newborn baby that didn't yet know how to talk, she had a voice, and she wasn't afraid to use it. I remembered hearing stories about how she yelled at nurses and said some unpleasant things to them. I heard for myself the screams and swears that would fill the air when things didn't go her way.
After a report from the night nurse was completed, I sat outside the room for a minute and reflected on a class that I had taken the previous day. I spent a full day in PERCS learning how to handle difficult situations. Ironically enough, the last scenario involved a teen whose cancer had returned. I replayed the entire experience back in my head trying to think about how that girl felt. Then I thought about how I would want to be treated if it were me in that hospital bed. I took my next deep breath of the day and tried to put myself back into that room where the actors had felt so real. I had wanted to cry with them yesterday but I knew that I had to stay strong, even if it were only for the moments that we were face-to-face. I knew I had to do that today as well. I had to be a strong, yet comforting support for someone going through such a tough time in her life.
Meghan was awake as I walked into the room to assess her. I introduced myself and explained that I would be her nurse for the day. I then went about my necessary business of morning medications and a quick head-to-toe assessment. After I completed that, it was important to ask Meghan how things were going, to try to establish some sort of connection with her. I learned in PERCS that sitting down with patients and families so that you are eye-to-eye is a good way to establish comfort, because you aren't towering over them. You are becoming their equal. I thought that this would be a nice starting point. She was slightly cold at first, giving me short answers and not looking like she felt like chatting, so I let her be for a while.
The next time I went in to assess her, she was sitting up in her bed and I attempted to connect one more time using some other skills I learned from PERCS. This time I tried to find a common ground with Meghan and being so close in age to her, it was not hard to find things we both enjoyed. We discussed friends and jobs, and then things started to flow. I thought to myself, if we were both from Boston then I had to mention the Boston Red Sox. This was the point I felt Meghan open up. A few jokes were cracked, and then with the mention of Jason Varitek, a friendly fight broke out about who loved him more. That is when a few smiles were let loose.
PERCS taught me to establish a connection with the patient I was caring for, but it was the few moments I took out of my morning to talk with Meghan, without being "the nurse," that helped us both out for the remainder of the day. After our fun chat, Meghan was more comfortable telling me why she was so upset and frustrated. She even held my hand and cried, explaining that it wasn't easy to have to depend on other people in order to go about your daily life. At this point I let her cry. I let her talk about all the things that she was angry and frustrated about and then when she was done talking I let her cry some more. I didn't say anything to her because PERCS taught me that silences were OK, especially when someone was crying. Sometimes what people need is a comforting presence to just be there with them, and I knew that I could do that for Meghan.
That afternoon, I saw the Meghan all her friends knew and loved. I saw the Meghan that didn't have to scream and swear in order to release frustration because she felt comfortable enough to just talk about things. She could tell me what she wanted and what she needed because she knew I was going to listen and I would be there for her.
That evening as I was about to leave work, I poked my head in to say goodbye to Meghan. She was sitting at her bed talking to a friend on the phone. She looked over at me and said that she was thankful that I was her nurse, and she had actually had a good day. I told her I was thankful that she was my patient for the day. I was thankful that I was able to use information I had learned from the day before in order to make a difference in someone's life. I was able to allow Meghan to open up and talk about things that she never felt comfortable talking about before with her nurses. I established a connection with Meghan that I will always remember and I used skills I will never forget.
I think that night we both went to sleep happy that we had met.
