October 20, 2015

102115HalloweenJJWatt640On October 13, Texas Children’s patients were treated to a surprise appearance by Batman at the eighth annual Spirit of Halloween party in The Zone. What patients, families and staff didn’t know was the man in the cape was none other than Houston Texans defensive end J.J. Watt. After taking off his mask, Watt spent time at the party painting pumpkins, playing foosball, taking photos, signing autographs and bringing smiles to everyone he met.

The surprise and party was featured on the Today Show. Click here to watch the story.

Each year, Spirit Halloween brings the fun and fantasy of Halloween to children at the hospital who otherwise might not be able to enjoy it. Spirit Halloween also supports our Child Life team throughout the year.

102115healthierlunches640Cutting calories can be easier when there are healthy options. In an effort to provide both patient families and employees with a healthier meal, Food and Nutrition Services has teamed up with several of our concept partners in the Clinical Care Center food court to bring in a healthy dose of food choices.

“As a health care organization, it is very important for us to give you healthy options when you dine with us,” said Claudia Conkin, director of Food and Nutrition Services. “Our food court is used not only by patient families, but also by our employees and we are constantly looking for ways to serve both better.”

The latest changes to the food court menu come from Villa Pizza, a vendor for more than 14 years. With the help of Texas Children’s, recipes have been reformulated to cut as much as 30 percent of calories. New lighter pizzettas with fresh toppings are offered and the Pizza station now offers a classic lunch meal deal with half portion entrees and a side of salad or vegetables.

Other offerings in the food court include a chef inspired Eat Right special that offers entrees and complete meals for under 600 calories while also reducing fat and sodium. This ongoing program is offered every Wednesday. The “make-your-own” Creation Station that offers salads, baked potatoes, pastas and other make-it-yourself options throughout the week has introduced lighter toppings such as reduced-fat sour cream, low-fat cheese and low-calorie salad dressings. Soda fountains have been replaced with freestyle machines that allow more options including 70 low calorie drinks and flavored waters. Chick-Fil-A offers kids meals with a fruit cup as a replacement for French fries at the same price within the hospital.

To encourage healthier choices, look for the Beanie’s Choice symbol throughout the food court to help identify lower calorie or nutrient packed foods to add to your daily diet.

102115kingwoodanniv640A year ago this October, Texas Children’s Hospital Outpatient Therapy at Kingwood Glen and the Texas Children’s Hospital Sports Medicine Therapy at Kingwood Glen opened their doors to the north Houston community of Kingwood to make services more convenient to patients and families who live there. Since then, the locations’ therapy staff has grown, referrals from local primary care physicians have increased and families have praised the facilities and their staff for making their lives easier and better.

One mom said her child, who visits the facilities regularly for therapy, is doing incredible. “We are very pleased with the skill level of the therapist there and the care they provide,” the mother said. Another family member of a child who receives therapy at Kingwood Glen said she is “so excited to have a Texas Children’s facility close to our home.”

Texas Children’s Hospital Outpatient Therapy at Kingwood Glen and the Texas Children’s Hospital Sports Medicine Therapy at Kingwood Glen occupy a 12,666- square-foot space on the corner of Farm to Market Road 1960 and West Lake Houston Parkway in Humble. Therapy services offered at the locations include physical, occupational and speech therapy as well as orthopedic and sports medicine therapy.

Both locations have added additional personnel, bringing the number of therapists to 13 and the support staff to four. Due to their hard work, the locations have increased referrals from our local Texas Children’s Pediatrics associates by 43 percent.

“The staff has dedicated themselves to family-centered care and imbedding themselves in the community in which they work,” therapy manager Jenna Henry said. “As we approach our one-year anniversary, we look back on the journey of opening a new clinic from the ground up, building relationships with our referring providers and are looking forward to continuing to grow to service the community around us.”

102115SanjeevVasudevan175The Macy Easom Cancer Research Foundation has awarded pediatric surgeon Dr. Sanjeev Vasudevan a $75,000 grant for research into a form of pediatric liver cancer called hepatoblastoma, which is a disease that usually affects children under the age of five.

Vasudevan’s research uses new imaging techniques to investigate intra-operative, real-time visualization of a tumor and blood vessels. These imaging techniques will allow surgeons to look at the actual structure of the liver during surgery without relying on previous scans that may not show the immediate condition of the liver. These methods allow surgeons to take as little of the non-cancerous area as possible by fully visualizing the tumor margin in relation to the blood vessels of the liver.

“With this research, we hope to be able to substantially redefine liver surgery to provide better outcomes for our patients,” said Vasudevan, who is also an assistant professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and an attending pediatric surgeon with the Texas Children’s Cancer Center.

This research is a collaborative project with the Texas Children’s departments of radiology and surgery. Dr. Ketankumar Ghaghada, assistant professor in The Singleton Department of Pediatric Radiology, is co-principal investigator on this research study. The project team is made up of multidisciplinary specialists from surgery and radiology.

Vasudevan is driven to discover more effective treatments for pediatric liver cancer. The high rates of relapse, the metastatic nature of the disease and the considerable issues related to chemotherapy treatment in children are of great concern to him.

“I am honored to have our research proposal recognized by The Macy Easom Cancer Research Foundation,” Vasudevan said.” I hope to further our mutual goals of finding a cure and improving treatments for pediatric liver cancer.”

The Macy Easom Cancer Research Foundation was established in memory of Macy Easom, a four-year-old girl who was diagnosed with hepatoblastoma and died of the disease at the age of five. The foundation’s mission is to provide funding to enable research devoted to finding a cure and treatment for hepatoblastoma and other pediatric cancers while promoting public awareness. For every dollar given to the foundation, 98 percent goes directly into research.

October 13, 2015

101415SIU640Pastel paint, shiny floors and spacious rooms equipped with the latest scientific and technological approaches to biocontainment are just a few of the features of the soon-to-be-finished Special Isolation Unit at Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus. The 8-bed unit designed for children with highly contagious infectious diseases is part of an 18-bed expansion of the hospital’s Acute Care Unit, which will open in mid-October.

“We are very excited about this state-of-the-art facility opening and serving our community’s most fragile patients,” said West Campus President Chanda Cashen Chacón. “The unit allows Texas Children’s to effectively and safely provide the best possible care to a patient who has a highly communicable disease while ensuring the health and safety of our team and other patients and families throughout the hospital.”

The decision to build a special isolation unit came last year after an unprecedented Ebola outbreak, resulting in the realization that we must be prepared to handle emerging infections as an institution. As a result, the state and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention designated Texas Children’s Hospital as one of several pediatric Ebola treatment centers countrywide.

Texas Children’s Special Isolation Unit is the only one of its kind in Texas and the southwest region, and is among the few in the United States designated just for children. Located on the fifth floor of West Campus, the unit will be fully equipped to care for any infant or child with a serious communicable disease, with all of the measures available to assure safety of the health care team, other patients and their families.

Each of the patient rooms, for example, has an antechamber, where doctors and nurses will put on personal protective gear. After treating a child inside the room, they will leave through a separate door and enter a third room, where they will take off the gear. Nurses will observe the entire time through large glass windows.

The unit also will have its own biosafety Level 3 laboratory, which allows for safe, on-site rapid identification of both usual and unusual pathogens. There’s also a separate medical waste room, where carts of used clothing and equipment can be wheeled inside 6-foot autoclaves.

Some of the unit’s additional features include:

  • Negative pressure rooms and isolated air handling
  • High-protocol workflows designed around a “clean-to-dirty” workflow
  • Observation windows into patient rooms to limit staff exposure
  • Specialized technology and communication devices to communicate as a team
  • Staff locker room where caretakers will show before leaving the unit after each shift
  • Child life play room for patient siblings and young visitors

In addition to a state-of-the-art facility, children coming to the Special Isolation Unit will receive top notch care from a team of highly-trained nurses and doctors. At least six members of the team, called the Special Response Team, will be assigned to each child, and one of them will act as a family liaison.

Children being treated in the unit will be able to use tablet computers to talk with their families via video chat, and will be able to see them through the large windows. To make the unit’s patients feel as comfortable as possible, a special doll is being developed that will wear a mini-version of the personal protective equipment the doctors and nurses wear.

The goal there, said Special Isolation Unit Assistant Director Dr. Judith Campbell, is to soothe even the youngest children, and help them understand: “Yes, we’re dressed up a little differently, but their little doll has similar attire on.”

The specialized unit will be led by Dr. Gordon Schutze, who will serve as medical director, as well as Campbell and Dr. Amy Arrington, who will be the unit’s associate medical directors. Sondra Morris will lead the team’s nursing staff. The unit will be run by a Special Response Team comprised of physicians, nurses, medical technologists and environmental service technicians who have been trained in infection control, hospital epidemiology and management of infectious diseases in the critical care setting.

“The team has completed up to 24 hours of specialized training to date to be ready to care for these patients safely,” Arrington said. “Additional training will be ongoing.”

When the Special Isolation Unit isn’t activated, it will be used as a new acute care unit for West Campus. Morris will lead the area when the Special Isolation Unit isn’t being used.

For more information about the Special Isolation Unit and the infectious diseases that might be treated there read this blog written by Campbell.

The finishing touches are being put on Texas Children’s Special Isolation Unit, an 8-bed unit designed for children with highly contagious infectious diseases. View the unit that is scheduled to open in mid-October.

Thousands of Texas Children’s employees have armed themselves against the upcoming flu season by taking advantage of the free flu vaccines that are being offered by Employee Health. It’s not too late for you to do the same.

Free flu shots are still being offered to all Texas Children’s employees, Baylor College of Medicine employees working in Texas Children’s facilities, Texas Children’s medical staff and volunteers at various events across the organization and at the Employee Health Clinic.

Staff Nurse Sarah Vining got her flu shot the second day it was being offered on The Auxiliary Bridge and said she gets the annual vaccine to protect herself, her family and the patients she serves against a potentially fatal infection.

“It’s important for our families and our patients, as well as our own families at home, to stay healthy and make sure that we’re in our best condition to take care of our patients,” Vining said. “So, get your flu shot!”

What’s in the shot?

The shot that is being offered to employees this year protects against four of the main flu viruses that research suggests will be the most common during the upcoming season.

Those viruses are:

  • Influenza A (H1N1)
  • Influenza A (H3N2)
  • Influenza B (Phuket)
  • Influenza B (Brisbane)

It takes about two weeks after vaccination for antibodies to develop in the body and provide protection against the flu. That’s why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends people get vaccinated soon after the vaccine becomes available. However, as long as flu viruses are circulating in a community, it’s not too late to get vaccinated.

“Getting the flu shot is important,” said Staff Nurse Vincent Orion prior to getting his annual vaccine on The Auxiliary Bridge. “It’s protects everybody.”

How to get vaccinated

Click here to view the dates and locations for your vaccination. If you are unable to make one of these dates, please make an appointment at the Employee Health clinic, located on the fifth floor of the Abercrombie Building near the yellow elevators, after October 1. If you have questions, please call Employee Health at Ext. 4-2150. West Campus Employee Health is located on the campus’ second floor and can be reached at Ext. 7-1365.

Visitation restrictions

Based on the increasing incidence of respiratory illness, effective at 6 a.m. Thursday, October 15 Texas Children’s Hospital is instituting new visitation restrictions for the inpatient units and critical care areas. To read more about these restrictions please click here.

101415takeback640Do you have any unwanted, unused or expired medications lingering in your medicine cabinet? Old prescription and over-the-counter pills left around the house can become a health and safety hazard, especially for small children and pets who may accidently get ahold of them.

To ensure the safe disposal of these medications, Texas Children’s Pharmacy Department will host the Medication “Take Back” Program from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Monday, October 19, at The Auxiliary Bridge. There will be drop-off boxes to safely dispose unwanted and expired medications.

“Medication safety has always been our priority,” said Brooke Bernhardt, assistant director of Clinical Services and Outcomes in the Department of Pharmacy. “Any time we can eliminate preventable harm, it’s a win-win situation for our employees, their families and the patients we serve.”

The Take Back Program coincides with National Pharmacy Week, and this year’s theme is “Be a Hero, Aim for Zero,” which reflects our Pharmacy Department’s commitment to eliminating medication errors.

The Auxiliary Bridge event will feature fun activities and prizes for the children geared towards medication safety and poison control, educational information about our Pharmacy Department and the research activities they are involved in, and a showcase of pharmacy technology that’s helping our staff eliminate medication administration errors.

As part of this year’s “Be a Hero, Aim for Zero” theme, two pharmacy employees will dress up as super heroes to greet patients and their families, and the children can get their pictures taken with them.