July 22, 2024

In a city long known for big cars and big attitudes, the new fleet of Texas Children’s shuttle buses and vans will definitely turn heads in Houston! Starting Monday, July 22, Facilities Operations is proud to have 18 new vehicles at the ready to shuttle team members and leaders between Medical Center buildings. (Thirteen shuttles circulate at a time, with five operating as spares.) Visit the G19 parking garage lobby between 5-10 a.m., to celebrate the launch and see the fleet for yourself.

Retrofitted with A/C running the entire length of the shuttle, a feature developed especially for Texas Children’s, the state-of-the-art fleet is unlike any other. Forty passengers in each standard shuttle will enjoy ventilation at the windows and aisles. Fresh colors replace drab black or grey seat coverings, and custom-designed exteriors wrap the body of each vehicle. Step-ups to shuttle doors are closer to ground level, making it easier and safer for riders of all kinds. Three electric-powered vans have been freshened up to welcome passengers.

“Our people deserve the best,” said Michael Jackson, director, Safety and Support Services Facilities Operations. “With a lot of pushing and pulling, going back and forth with the manufacturer, we were able to get so much done. What an impact this is going to have! It’s pretty amazing.”

Having more than one fuel option to power the fleet will help new buses and vans work well under pressure. Old shuttles ran on propane fuel, only, which would sometimes thin out in high temperatures and make vehicles inoperable. The new fleet can operate on energy efficient propane, but it can also use gas to power vehicles on intense summer days. Jackson quipped, “When temperatures soar, we won’t get beat by the heat!”

and come rain or come shine, we’ll look and feel great… riding in style!

After completing his PhD at the University of Verona in Italy, Alessandro Baldan was searching for a post-doc position in the United States. He soon began working with Dr. Bertuch in pediatric hematology. Now, he is a staff scientist in Research Tissue Support Services, supporting clinical trials, taking care of the Tissue Bank and supervising operations in the lab. You’d never guess from his impressive list of credentials that he moonlights as a performer in musicals and plays!

What brings you joy at Texas Children’s?

It’s knowing I’m doing my part in the hospital’s mission to improve the well-being of children.

What has been the most rewarding moment in your time at Texas Children’s?

The feedback I received after my first annual performance as staff scientist in RTSS. A new position in a leadership role comes with a lot of challenges and knowing I achieved what was expected of me and that my work was appreciated was greatly rewarding.

What was the best thing a Texas Children’s buddy/friend ever did for you?

It was taking me out for dinner on my birthday. During my first year at TCH, I was so focused on my work that I forgot to celebrate myself. It’s wonderful to have friends at work that care about you.

How do you recharge your batteries away from work?

I perform in musicals and plays. It’s how I find my zen and it helps me connect with lots of amazing artists. Recently, I was in the regional professional premiere of The Bodyguard the Musical where I played my first villain role. I am usually cast in comedic roles like Max in The Sound of Music, or Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast, so that was a big challenge and lots of fun.

Tell us a fun fact about yourself.

I am a trained actor, opera singer and musician. For a while, I studied at a conservatory of music in Italy. Also, twice I won the Houston Broadway World Award for Best Supporting Performer in a Musical.

Do you have a story to tell? With more than 17,000 team members and countless Texas Children’s locations across Houston and Austin, we don’t want to miss a thing.

Whether it’s caring for a patient, recognizing a colleague, solving a problem or reaching a milestone, we always strive to highlight the great work of our One Amazing Team. If there’s new technology, innovations or ways of working that have made your job easier or helped you be more efficient, keep us posted.

We recently started profiling team members with unique hobbies and special connections to Texas Children’s. Please reach out if you or a colleague wants to share their experience!

To submit a story idea, news item or event, please read our content guidelines below and then complete this form. The HR/Corporate Communications department will review your submission and contact you for more information. ⁠

Content guidelines

Content selections and scheduling are at the discretion of the HR/Corporate Communications team. Please request content at least three weeks in advance.

Featured (Hero Space) Stories

New stories post every Monday. These stories need to appeal to a mass audience. Content includes
major initiatives, such as new organizational wide programs, Annual Enrollment, Flu, innovations, new technology, new buildings and/or services and people features.

News You Can Use

New listings post every Monday. This section offers short news items relevant to individuals or items that could affect operations. These are not long form or feature stories. Examples include shuttle schedules, award application deadlines, new employee listings, blood drives, etc.

Awards & Recognition

New stories post every Monday. This section includes organizational, individual, team, external and internal awards and recognition. Examples include Daisy, Super Star, Bravo, Shamrock, provider excellence, grants, accreditations, external awards, etc.

Events calendar

To submit an event for the calendar, it must be open to everyone in the organization and at least two weeks prior to the event date. Submissions must include date, times, location, description, registration links, speakers, contact information, etc. For requests for the featured event section, please include a graphic, logo or photo.

Due to limited space available to feature stories and important news relevant to the majority of the organization, it’s not possible to accommodate all requests for content. In some cases, there may be opportunities to feature your news in other communications channels.

Fixed areas of the site

These sections have fixed or predetermined content based on research and analytics, so we cannot accommodate content requests or submissions for these sections:

  • Quick links buttons (Voyager, Human Resources, Kronos, Forms, IS Service Portal, etc.)
  • Top navigation landing pages (Resources, News & Events, Sites, Help)
  • Current initiatives
  • Blogs and newsletters

Industry best practices and organizational research drive the content strategy and design for the new Connect site. The goal is to provide an informative and useful resource for our workforce. We look forward to hearing from you!

July 17, 2024

The new Connect has main landing pages (Resources, News & Events, Sites and Help) instead of long drop-down lists, making room for a cleaner and more functional homepage.

If you’re looking for a link from the old homepage, it can likely now be found on the Resources or Sites page, or the revamped Employee Resources page. This page features categorized links relevant to the majority of our workforce. For department specific links, please visit those department or team SharePoint sites.

Since launching the new Connect, we used your feedback to rearrange content on the Resources page. Clinical Resources were pushed to the top of the page so that our providers can access the tools they need with more ease.

Where to find…
  • Event Reporting (Safety Scoop) – Click the Resources landing page and scroll down to Clinical Resources quick links. It’s also on the Help landing page under Quick Links (Report an Incident).
  • Spok On-Call Schedule & Directory – Click the Resources landing page and scroll down to Clinical Resources quick links.
  • Drug Information Formulary – Click the Resources landing page and scroll down to Clinical Resources quick links.
  • Online External Referrals (REDCap) – Click the Resources landing page and scroll down to Clinical Resources quick links. You can also find REDCap links on the Employee Resources page under ‘Data and reports.’
  • Concur – Click the Resources landing page and scroll down to Employee Resources quick links. It’s the featured resource on the photo.
  • Reports – Click the Resources landing page and scroll down to Employee Resources quick links.
  • SharePoint My Following Sites – Now called My Favorites on the Quick Links bar (far right) of the Home page.
  • Strata – Visit the Financial Planning & Analysis site and scroll down to quick links.

Visit the Help page to find frequently asked questions (FAQs) and watch short videos on how to navigate the new Connect. We also encourage you to “follow” your frequently visited SharePoint sites and set up bookmarks and favorites in Chrome and Edge for external websites.

If you’re still having trouble locating an item and can’t find it in the areas listed above, or have feedback you want to share, please reach out to HRCommunications@texaschildrens.org and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

July 16, 2024

It’s hard to lose dedicated, hardworking employees. Texas Children’s has been fortunate to have Child Life Specialist and facility dog handler Meg Gustafson for the last nine years, but July 19 will be her last day as she and Angus head to Mississippi. They will continue their child life and trauma-related work while Meg pursues a graduate degree at Mississippi State University.

This was not an easy decision for Meg, but grad school was something she had thought about off and on for several years. She stayed in touch with several professors from undergrad and one asked if she would be interested in doing a graduate assistantship with her. Through this program, Meg and Angus will work with families in a Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TRBI) course educating caregivers on meeting the basic needs of children impacted by trauma, providing them tactics for emotional regulation and helping the kids get back to just being kids. They’ll also be working with Mississippi State child life students on a local hospital’s pediatric unit with the ultimate goal of creating a designated child life program for the hospital.

Meg is bringing beautiful memories of her time at Texas Children’s with her. “Getting to see the growth of the program, The Zone opening, the Teddy Bear Clinic, and of course, learning we were getting a dog at West Campus and being hired as the handler – gosh, it’s so hard to narrow down,” Meg recalled.

Certified Angus

It’s even harder for her to narrow down her favorite moments with Angus. “We’ve gone out and done the first pitch at the Space Cowboys game for the last two years. We’ve partnered with Katy High School on their toy drive. Getting to dive into the community has been an awesome part of being here,” said Meg. Not to mention all the love for her overgrown lap dog from both team members and patients. “We have hundreds of pictures of him in people’s laps. He just wants to be held,” she laughed.

The patient encounters are what really stay with her though. She shared a couple of her most memorable moments:

“We had a patient who was four or five and refusing to walk after surgery. But he said he would do it for Angus. He only walked from his bed to the nurse’s station, but his mom was in the background crying because he hadn’t even wanted to take a step.”

“We also had an older teen diagnosed with leukemia. Angus and I were present for her diagnosis conversation and then she transferred to the Med Center. But her parents emailed me she was coming to West Campus for a follow up and it happened to be the one-year anniversary of her diagnosis. She had knit Angus a bandana and wrote this really sweet note. He loves everybody, but there are just certain patients he really connects with.”

A Fond Farewell

West Campus will have an Angus-shaped hole in its heart, but we know they are going to continue their life-changing work. Texas Children’s wishes both Meg and Angus all the best and encourage you all to do the same on their Viva Engage page!

Not everyone would move across the world to pursue their career, but that’s exactly what Akari Fujino, MS, CCLS, did. After discovering her love for Child Life in high school, she knew she would have to make a big change to make her dream a reality. Now she calls Texas Children’s home and is making a difference in the lives of the children and families we serve.

What makes you happiest about being part of our One Amazing Team?

I like that Texas Children’s appreciates diversity. I grew up in Japan, so I have very different cultural background. People at TCH are open and encouraging!

What is your favorite part about your job?

As a child life specialist, I help patients and families cope with medical experiences. I really enjoy the process of learning patients’ strengths and tailoring my interventions. When children share with me how they have coped with difficulties or what they have learned from medical experiences, it brings me great joy and respect for their resilience.

Give a shout-out to someone at Texas Children’s for making a difference.

I want to give a shoutout to the Child Life team. As a first year, I receive a lot of support from other Child Life staff, and they are always willing to help each other. I am amazed when I learn about their experiences and how they make a difference in each patient and families’ journey in the hospital.

How do you recharge your batteries away from work?

When I am tired, I like spending time at home doing arts and crafts. I like creating complex modular origami. Sometimes, I use about 300 origami papers to make one product! I feel like moving my hands helps me process thoughts and feelings that I cannot necessarily articulate.

Tell us a fun fact about yourself.

After I found my passion for Child Life in high school, I taught myself English. Japan does not have child life education or certifications yet, so I would have to move. Moving to the United States by myself to pursue this career was very surprising to everyone around me because I was so shy. It is sometimes hard to be far away from my home and family, but I am grateful to have my dream job here.

July 10, 2024

You’ve heard the idea of family first, but for Texas Children’s practice managers and sisters, Heidi Howard-Jircik and Hannah Conley, patients are the priority and colleagues are the top concern.

The sisters had a good feeling about Texas Children’s early on. “Our mom worked in a call center in what used to be the FM 1960 practice…she thought it was the right place to start,” explained Heidi. Since joining Texas Children’s in the early 2000s, Heidi in 2003 and Hannah in 2007, the siblings have served in a variety of dayshift and nightshift roles – before taking positions as Practice Managers of TCP Heights (Heidi) and TCP Cypresswood (Hannah).

When asked how the sisters could be so well-suited for their roles, Heidi responded, “We both have real compassion for people. We work towards common goals, and we genuinely care about our team members.”

Hannah shared a secret to their success, “It’s really nice to have each other to bounce ideas off of. We shared a team-building idea, for example, the Saran wrap game. You wrap small gifts – goodies – in Saran wrap, in layers – building in more small gifts as you go – then pass the wrapped gifts around while you’re wearing oven mitts! It was great. The staff seemed to really enjoy it.”

Whether they are talking on the phone after work or getting together on the weekends, these close sisters enjoy sharing professional advice and brainstorming best practices. Yes, other family members ask them to stop talking about work from time to time, but the sisters revel in their bond and their roles. For Heidi, “It’s nice to have my sister in the same hospital system.” Hannah reveals, “I’m honored. My heart is here.”

Texas Children’s is just as proud to have this family… in our family.