May 6, 2019

On April 26, Texas Children’s Child Life Department hosted its second annual hospital prom. The prom brought together patients, friends and family members to celebrate this important life event. Following such a successful turnout for the inaugural event last year, this year’s event grew thanks to the generous support of donors and volunteers.

Prom is just one of the many milestone events in a teenager’s life that every child longs to experience.

Donned with masks, a little makeup, and music, inpatients and outpatients at Texas Children’s Hospital were able to experience this monumental occasion on-site at the Medical Center campus.

“Creating opportunities for patients and their families to make positive memories that they may not have had otherwise is extremely fulfilling,” Event co-chair Activity Coordinator, Brandi Clark said. “We loved getting to see patients have the experience to feel confident, beautiful, handsome, and special while having the night of their lives. It was all we could ever ask for and is exactly what makes us passionate about our jobs as activity coordinators.”

While patients were getting their fabulous prom makeovers and putting on glamorous gowns and tuxedos, the fourth floor Pavilion for Women conference room was turned into the perfect masquerade-themed setting. Child Life partnered with several donors to provide formal wear for all patients who participated.

As patients began to arrive with their friends and family, members of the local coastguard greeted them at the door to escort patients without dates for a night to remember. Some parents tearfully said their goodbyes as they dropped their teens off, while others stayed and enjoyed themselves in the lobby outside of the room where prom was held. The family section included movies, games, and refreshments to entertain parents and siblings while the prom goers enjoyed much needed time with their friends.

Inside the prom palace along the wall lied delectable pastries and punch for the teens to indulge in along with t-shirts that they could take as memorable gifts. When patients walked into the room they were instantly drawn to the photo booth. For a moment, pictures with friends and entertaining props gained everyone’s attention until the DJ began to play all of the latest hits and dance songs that drew everyone to the dance floor.

“Personally seeing some of my chronic patients and families experience a night of normalcy at prom- dancing, singing, laughing, and dressing up has made prom better than we could have hoped for,” Event co-chair Activity Coordinator Zoie Drake said. “We loved that as Activity Coordinators we were able to create a space where so many of our patients and their friends could connect and feel like regular teenagers.”

For hours into the night the teens danced, sang, ate and laughed. With nearly 80 participants this year, the event turned out to be better than expected and has paved the way for a more extravagant event next year.

“Seeing our patients in a new light dressed up, dancing, making new friends that are also in the hospital was one of the most rewarding parts about planning prom,” Event co-chair Activity Coordinator Megan Ekedahl said. “We look forward to this event growing with the Texas Children’s Hospital patient population and have prom be something patients and families talk about and look forward to year after year.”

Patient Experience Week 2019 sailed off effortlessly with more than 600 patients, families and employees in attendance. From April 22 to April 26, these fun and engaging nautical-themed activities at Texas Children’s Hospital Medical Center Campus, Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus and Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands were specifically designed to celebrate and emphasize our focus on patient experience as we continue to strive for excellent patient-centered care.

At the beginning of the week for the second consecutive year, the Patient Experience team opened the Compassion Challenge to employees. During Patient Experience Week, staff and providers across the organization completed a challenge that focused on the concepts of compassion, communication and connectedness. Amongst the 348 employees that registered and completed the compassion challenge, Mary Hatchett and Elyssa Blum were chosen as the winners of two tickets aboard a lunch cruise on The Boardwalk FantaSea, a luxury yacht located in Kemah, Texas that sails off later this summer.

The first portion of the Patient Experience Week celebration was the Caught You Caring (CYC) Awards ceremonies held at each hospital to recognize our 2019 recipients who have gone above and beyond to show compassion to our patients, families and co-workers.

“I was honored to be recognized during the Caught You Caring awards ceremony,” Post-Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) Nurse at the Woodlands Campus, Jennifer Grubbs said. “I was surrounded by so many others who were recognized, and deserving as well. I was humbled to hear such kind words shared by families and co-workers, and how I have impacted their experience in our surgery department in The Woodlands. I truly love what I do every day, and enjoy making a positive impact for a worried parent, or anxious child.”

The CYC program’s idea was brought to life after a physician read a heartfelt letter written by the mother of one of our patients. She described the care and compassion her whole family received during her son’s admission. Since then, CYC was conceptualized, piloted in our surgery areas in 2015, and has been launched system-wide with more than 10,000 CYC cards received to date. CYC boxes are located throughout all campuses so that anyone can recognize a staff member or a colleague.

A panel of judges scored each nomination to select the top employees who are as follow:

Texas Children’s Hospital Medical Center Campus winners:

  • Xavier George, PCA, Ambulatory Surgery
  • Calvin Haskett, USA waste removal, EVS
  • Ashly Swaty, PCM, PICU
  • Carmen Vela, ASR, Plastic Surgery
  • Honorable mentions: Wanda Diaz-Gonzalez, Kandi Korte-Kidd, Stephanie Portillo, Mary Vail, Maria Olfindo

Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women winners:

  • Shamika Jenkins, clerical secretary, Surgery
  • Roxanna Miremadi, sonographer, Women’s Services

Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus winners:

  • Almea Montillo, PCM, 5West
  • Kristi White, respiratory therapist, respiratory care
  • Honorable mentions: Mary Ann Callejo, Roy Chicombing, Naomi Cockerham, Amanda Gonzalez, Jonathan Miller, Martin Romualdo, Marie Sayles, Sygnore Valdeavilla

Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands winners:

  • Jennifer Grubbs, RN, Surgery
  • Juan Flores, x-ray tech, radiology
  • Honorable mentions: Javier Blanco-Rais, JesVon Davis, Ashley Hanley, Ana Mauricio, Clari Scota, Lindsey Zaremba

Patient Experience Week bridge events were also held at each campus. As people approached the bridge events they were given leis to kick off their experience, and led through a sea of engaging activities. Departments from across the hospital were given the opportunity to make creative nautical-themed booths. A friendly competition led 35 departments to host their best themed-activity tables to create fun interactions for our patients. Music, games, snacks, costumes, props, and even bubbles were just a few of the interactive ways that employees grabbed the attention of patients and the bridge event judges.

The departments with the best tables during the Patient Experience Week bridge events will be announced in the upcoming Patient Experience newsletter and awarded a special prize.

The mission that care at Texas Children’s goes beyond the bedside was displayed during Patient Experience Week 2019 as the team took employees, patients and families to sea in this amazingly creative theme. Patient experience ultimately goes beyond the high-quality medical care that we provide, but also has to do with how we treat our patients and their families from the moment they call to schedule an appointment, while they are visiting with us, and to the point they leave our care.

“This year’s participation was incredible. The compassion and commitment shown for our patients and their experience was felt all around,” Patient Experience Assistant Director, Elisa Mozley said. “Many families and employees stopped to share how impactful these celebrations are to them – the joy it brought them. It is everything we hope to accomplish each year during this time.”

Three-year-old Wade Davis rarely laughed or smiled as a baby. Before coming to Texas Children’s Hospital two years ago, the now energetic, gregarious little boy was very subdued.

“I just thought he was a serious child,” said Wade’s mom, Katie Davis. “I didn’t think there was anything physically wrong with him.”

But there was, and Katie quickly learned after a trip to the emergency room that Wade had a rare form of cancer in both of his eyes. Called retinoblastoma, the cancer begins in the back of the eye and is most commonly found in young children. Only 300 cases are diagnosed in the United States each year.

To get the best care, Wade and his family traveled from their home in Lacassine, Louisiana, to the Texas Medical Center where they met with members of the Retinoblastoma Center of Houston, the only center of its kind in the southwest United States.

Created a decade ago, the center combines expertise from Texas Children’s Cancer Center, the Children’s Cancer Hospital at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston Methodist Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine. Together these specialists pioneer advancements in treating and curing retinoblastoma through ground-breaking research and the development of innovative therapies.

The center sees 20 to 25 patients a year, offering each one access to a team comprised of an ocular oncologist, pediatric oncologist, ophthalmic pathologist, cancer geneticist, genetic counselor, radiation oncologist, interventional radiologist, nurse practitioner, nurse coordinator and social worker. The team’s multidisciplinary approach results in an individualized treatment plan for each patient.

Depending on the kind and stage of retinoblastoma, the team offers treatments such as intra-arterial chemotherapy, intravitreal chemotherapy, systemic chemotherapy, laser therapy, cryotherapy, enucleation, proton beam radiation therapy, and brachytherapy. In children with widely metastatic disease, the center offers therapies such as autologous stem cell transplant.

“No other program of this type has the level of multidisciplinary expertise that we have at the Retinoblastoma Center of Houston,” said Dr. Murali Chintagumpala, clinical co-director of the center, pediatric oncologist at Texas Children’s Cancer Center and professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine. “We are on the cutting edge of research performing important clinical trials that incorporate innovate treatment options such as intra-arterial, intravitreal and proton radiation therapy.”

For Wade, and other children like him, the center and its experts saved and changed his life. Dr. Dan Gombos, clinical co-director of the Retinoblastoma Center of Houston and ocular oncologist for the Children’s Cancer Hospital at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, and Dr. Frank Lin, a member of the center, a pediatric oncologist at Texas Children’s Cancer Center and Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Section of Hematology/Oncology, at Baylor College of Medicine, were his primary physicians.

Working together with the rest of the center’s team, Gombos and Lin devised a comprehensive treatment plan for Wade that included surgery, multiple rounds of chemotherapy, cryotherapy and laser therapy. Fortunately, the vision in his right eye was saved and his cancer has been eradicated, allowing him to blossom into a feisty, full-of-life little boy.

“We are so thankful for what these doctors have done for our son,” Katie Davis said. “Everyone has been absolutely incredible.”

Lin said it’s a privilege to be able to work with patients like Wade and to be celebrating 10 years of partnership with other members of the Retinoblastoma Center of Houston.

“Our goal, beyond curing this disease, is to use the least invasive treatment necessary to save the child’s life, and when possible, their eye and their vision,” Lin said. “With the Retinoblastoma Center of Houston, our patients meet world class specialists focused on both their immediate oncology treatment as well as long-term follow-up so that they can thrive in the future. The center also provides them invaluable information about the genetics of their tumor and the risk to future siblings or ultimately their own children so that monitoring for early detection can be performed.”

The center currently is focusing its research on more effective ways of delivering therapy locally to the affected eyes while minimizing the side effects on the rest of the body. The center is also studying the mechanisms that spread the disease beyond the eye in children with retinoblastoma with the goal of developing treatments for this complication of the disease.

To learn more, visit the Retinoblastoma Center of Houston’s Website at rbhouston.org.

Texas Children’s Emergency Management and Bone Marrow Transplant teams recently conducted their first full-scale radiation injury treatment exercise partnering with outside agencies to simulate their roles in a radiation-related event.

As a member of the Radiation Injury Treatment Network (RITN), Texas Children’s conducts annual exercises as part of our emergency preparedness activities. RITN is a system of hospitals affiliated with the National Marrow Donor Program providing comprehensive evaluation and treatment for victims of radiation exposure. MD Anderson Cancer Center is the only other RITN member organization in the Greater Houston area.

“Over the past three years, the Emergency Management team at Texas Children’s has worked closely with the Radiation Injury Treatment Network to increase the fidelity and realism of the drills we have been conducting,” said Dr. Brent Kaziny, Medical Director of Emergency Management. “Developing plans for such hopefully never-in-our-lifetime events is one of the many responsibilities of Emergency Management. Seeing plans tested first as tabletop drills and eventually as full scale exercises allow us to pinpoint where improvements need to be made. Texas Children’s Hospital has come so far, and watching these plans become operational is extremely rewarding.” 

Texas Children’s Emergency Management Manager Aaron Freedkin agreed and said if there was a radiation event nearby, Texas Children’s would get many of the affected pediatric patients.” 

“That’s why it’s so important for us to practice and prepare for such an event,” Freedkin said. “Last week’s exercise gave us a great opportunity to do that.”

The seven-hour event was the first full-scale radiation injury treatment exercise the organization has participated in and tested our response following the mock detonation of an improvised nuclear device that sends patients requiring bone marrow transplant or supportive medical care to Houston by way of the National Disaster Medical System.

The exercise involved various outside local, state and federal agencies including the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council, Veteran’s Affairs, and American Medical Response. The exercise began at Ellington Field, a joint military and civilian airport that would host the Patient Reception Center during a large-scale disaster. Run by the Veteran’s Affairs Federal Coordinating Center, the center would receive patients from outside Houston and coordinate available local resources.

Texas Children’s Bone Marrow Team Member Dr. John Craddock said understanding who the local players are and how to work with them is a great addition to the annual exercise, which typically has been a tabletop exercise with the exception of last year when it expanded to a large scale functional exercise involved Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus and Texas Children’s Hospital The Woodlands.

“This year, the exercise was full scale, giving us a more realistic idea of what we would be dealing with,” Craddock said. “I think it was very informative.”

During the exercise, Craddock and another members of the Bone Marrow Transplant team helped receive, triage and assign for transport to area hospitals 50 mock pediatric patients and 50 adult patients. The pediatric patients at Ellington Field were played by high school students from Friendswood High School. The adult patients at Ellington Field were played by adult volunteers from various civic groups including Bay CERT, a local Community Emergency Response Team.

The second half of the exercise took place on the fourth floor of the Pavilion for Women, part of which was turned into a Patient Reception Center for the patients coming to Texas Children’s Hospital for evaluation and/or treatment. Those mock patient and their family members were played by DeBakey High School students and saw members of our pathology, chaplain, social work, patient experience and case management teams before being transferred to a patient care room if necessary.

“This is the first time we’ve simulated going from plane to hospital,” said James Mitchell director of Organizational Resilience and Emergency Management. “Going through the entire process really expanded our knowledge about how this would work.”

Texas Children’s celebrated Laboratory Professionals Week April 21-27 with a variety of activities and events. Many were honored for their tenure in the department and others for their dedication to the mission of the profession.

“Laboratory Professionals Week provides the profession with a unique opportunity to increase public understanding of and appreciation for clinical laboratory personnel,” said Texas Children’s Director of Pathology Ann O’Connell. “The clinical laboratorian is a key member of our health care team, playing an increasingly vital role in the diagnosis and prevention of disease.”

The Texas Children’s Department of Pathology hosted two lectures and an awards ceremony during Laboratory Professionals Week. The first lecture honored Texas Children’s former Division Chief of Clinical Pathology and current Director of Pathology Informatics Gregory Buffone, Ph.D.

Buffone, who will soon retire after 40 years with Texas Children’s, has served in many roles in the Department of Pathology, always as a passionate advocate for patient safety and quality in laboratory medicine. In addition to a dedicated laboratory professional, Buffone also is an avid photographer. As a tribute to Buffone and his contributions to the Department of Pathology, several of his images are on permanent display in the Pathology Gresik Conference Room in the basement of the West Tower Building.

Pathologist-in-Chief Dr. James Versalovic celebrated his 10th anniversary as head of the Department of Pathology at Texas Children’s. Versalovic has been with Texas Children’s for nearly 18 years and has made significant strides in the Department of Pathology, growing the department’s faculty and clinical staff two fold. He spearheaded the creation of the Genomic Medicine and Transfusion Safety divisions and invested time and effort in growing the Texas Children’s Microbiome Center. Versalovic also led a multitude of critical initiatives across the organization. He was instrumental in the creation of the innovative partnership with Quest Diagnostics and most recently has worked on the adoption and implementation of Epic Beaker.

“Please join me in congratulating Jim on this milestone, and for his superb leadership and the incredible achievements he has accomplished during his tenure,” Texas Children’s President and CEO Mark Wallace said. “We look forward to celebrating many more years of success with him!”

The annual Virginia Deeken Memorial Lecture presented by Aaron West Assistant Director also included two types of awards. The GJ Buffone Pathology Improvement Award recipients Dr. James Dunn, Clarah Mutandiro, Amber Ashgar, Marcus Mpwo, Awilda Rivera and Rina Riordan won the award for their Improved Turnaround Time for Urine Culture Reporting initiative. The Individual Excellence Award recipients were Purnima Rania and Renee Webb. The award honors employees who consistently going above and beyond expectations of job performance.

“Thank you for all of your hard work and contributions toward the care and diagnosis of our so many complex patients,” said Executive Vice President Mark Mullarkey. “Your work is endless, 24/7/365 and it directly impacts the care delivered to our patients we serve.”