November 18, 2019

Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine recently hosted the Pediatric Critical Care Summit of the Americas, a first of its kind bilingual assembly that provided a forum for building bridges among health care providers in the Americas.

More than 500 people from 15 countries attended the summit, which was held from November 7-10 and included seven pre-conference workshops, a tour of Texas Children’s Hospital, three full days of symposia, a bachata dance workshop and a fiesta.

Some of the goals of the summit, which blended two pediatric critical care organizations – the US-based 26th Pediatric Critical Care Colloquium and the Latin American-based 15th Latin American Congress of Pediatric Intensive Care – were:

  • Support, encourage and promote excellence in clinical care and research in the field of pediatric critical care across the Americas.
  • Encourage collegial relationships between US, Central American and Latin American pediatric intensivists and the greater inter-professional team.
  • Promote basic, translational, and clinical research related to critically ill children both while acutely ill and after discharge from the ICU.
  • Promote and disseminate related quality improvement and patient safety materials through established and developing communication technologies.

Plenary speakers and their topics of discussion included:

  • Drs. Jesus Lopez-Herce (Spain) and Jefferson Piva (Brazil) – Intensive Care in the Americas in 2019: Forging a New Doctor
  • Texas Children’s Physician-in-Chief Dr. Mark W. Kline – Global / International Outreach in Pediatric Medicine
  • Texas Children’s associate chief of Critical Care Medicine Dr. Paul Checchia – Pediatric Cardiac Care in 2019
  • Dr. Bettina Von Dessauer (Chile) and Texas Children’s Critical Care physician Dr. Fernando Stein – The Human Cost of ICU Survival
  • Dr. Joseph Carcillo (University of Pittsburgh) – Inflammation, Sepsis, and Organ Failure: Where are We Going?

The modernization of pediatric critical care medicine has improved the quality of health care delivered to children with life-threatening conditions and has drastically reduced their mortality. As a consequence, a growing cohort of children and adolescents who survive a stay in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) do so with varying degrees of special healthcare needs and technology dependence.

They need a medical home and require complex medical care often coupled with frequent ICU readmissions and pose new challenges to caregivers, providers, health care systems and society. Pediatric intensive care providers are tasked with providing skilled quality care to critically ill children with empathy, compassion, professionalism and resilience but are also obliged to transition them from hospital to nurturing home care.

Global collaboration and information sharing has improved greatly but accessibility still is not uniform across the Americas and profound disparities still exist with regard to resources, organization, and continuing education. The Pediatric Critical Care Summit of the Americas represented international cooperation targeted toward these challenges in global Pediatric Critical Care.

November 12, 2019

In this episode of Medically Speaking, Texas Children’s Chief of Otolaryngology Dr. Anna Messner discusses different kinds of noisy breathing in children, particularly stridor – a typically high-pitched breathing sound. Messner outlines different varieties of stridor, the typical causes, the risks associated with each and ways to address these issues.

“A baby’s breathing should be relatively quiet,” said Messner. “It’s important to pay attention to different types of noisy breathing, as they can sometimes indicate a more serious problem.”

In her talk, Messner discusses the red flags that medical providers should be on the lookout for, which include:

  • High-pitched stridor
  • A child using accessory muscles to assist in breathing
  • Feeding issues or a failure to gain weight
  • Severe reflux

Learn more about Texas Children’s expertise in the treatment of common and complex conditions of the ear, nose, throat, head and neck in the Division of Otolaryngology.

About Medically Speaking
Medically Speaking, a video series from Texas Children’s Service Line Marketing, features some of the brightest minds from several Texas Children’s specialty and subspecialty areas. The series is meant to be a helpful educational resource for parents and a convenient way for physicians and other caregivers to stay up-to-date on the latest in pediatric medicine. Viewers can watch talks on a variety of interesting topics, including advancements in surgery, breakthroughs in research, new clinical trials, and novel and back-practice treatments for specific conditions.

Don’t miss future Medically Speaking episodes featured here on Connect, or view additional episodes now.

PLEASE NOTE:
This presentation is not intended to present medical advice or individual treatment recommendations, and does not supplant the practitioner’s independent clinical judgment. Practitioners are advised to consider the management of each patient in view of the clinical information. All content is shared for informational purposes only, and reflects the thoughts and opinions of the original author. No physician-patient relationship is being created by the use of this presentation. The presentation sets out recommendations based upon similar circumstances and is provided as an educational tool. The presenters are not attorneys, and to the extent this presentation provides commentary on current laws and regulations affecting health care activities, it is not intended as legal advice.

On his blog, Mark Wallace continues his Leadership Maxim series with his third guest blogger, Gary Bradshaw, who writes about Maxim No. 3: We lead in our professional lives and in our personal lives. By commenting on Bradshaw’s blog – and the next two blog posts in the Leadership Maxim series – you can score a spot at a Houston Texans event! Throughout November, the Corporate Communications team will randomly select 100 people from the comments to attend a private event with the Houston Texans, including a behind-the-scenes tour of NRG Stadium, an autograph session with two Houston Texans football players and photos with Texans cheerleaders. The event will be held on Tuesday, December 3. Read more

November 5, 2019

On his blog, Mark Wallace continues his Leadership Maxim series with his second guest blogger, Tiffany Bittner, who writes about Maxim No. 2: Leadership applies to everyone. By commenting on Bittner’s blog – and the next three blogs in the Leadership Maxim series – you can secure a chance to score a spot at a Houston Texans event. Throughout November, the Corporate Communications team will randomly select 100 people from the comments to attend a private event with the Houston Texans, including a behind-the-scenes tour of NRG Stadium, an autograph session with two Houston Texans football players and photos with Texans cheerleaders. The event will be held on Tuesday, December 3. Read more

October 29, 2019

On his blog, Mark Wallace kicks off his Leadership Maxim series with his first guest blogger, Daniel Osmand, who writes about Maxim No. 1: Leadership always influences or determines outcomes. By commenting on Osmand’s blog – and the next four blogs in the Leadership Maxim series – you can secure a chance to score a spot at a Houston Texans event. Throughout November, the Corporate Communications team will randomly select 100 people from the comments to attend a private event with the Houston Texans, including a behind-the-scenes tour of NRG Stadium, an autograph session with two Houston Texans football players and photos with Texans cheerleaders. The event will be held on Tuesday, December 3. Read more

This fiscal year The West Campus Quality, Innovation, and Research Strategic Imperative team implemented two unique and informative events to engage and educate staff and providers on the importance of quality improvement work and its impact on improving patient care and outcomes.

“It stemmed from the four strategic imperatives for the organization, one of them being research quality and innovation,” Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus Assistant Vice-President Matt Timmons said. “It’s really about awareness, and a celebration of the improvements that were made over the last year.”

On August 29, dozens of employees from all disciplines attended West Campus’ Quality Boot camp which was geared toward enhancing their Quality Improvement (QI) knowledge and skills through an interactive education session applying the Institute of Healthcare Improvement’s quality tools listed below:

  • A Cause and Effect Diagram that helps you analyze the root causes contributing to an outcome.
  • Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, which is a systematic, proactive method for identifying potential risks and their impact.
  • Run Charts and Control Charts that help monitor performance and visualize variation.
  • The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) worksheet that helps teams assess whether a change leads to improvement using a methodical learning process.

“I appreciate going through the steps as a group and then getting to apply the knowledge for our own project,” a participant commented in a follow up survey.

In addition to the boot camp, on October 10, West Campus hosted a Quality Showcase. This event gathered West Campus staff and providers to listen and discuss visual presentations that highlighted innovative solutions through quality projects that have had a positive impact on patient care, outcomes, and access

In alignment with the organization’s strategic requirements, the West Campus leadership developed these efforts to inform, motivate, and execute quality effectively.

“You have to practice quality,” Texas Children’s West Campus Assistant Director of Respiratory Care Clinic, Gboly Harris said. “With this initiative we want to ensure that everyone is aware of quality practices to ultimately improve outcomes for patients.”

Upon providing background information each presenter was asked to set sustainable goals in their areas, document the outcomes and preventative steps, and effectively expound on their model of care. Below are the 10 quality project focuses presented at the showcase:

  • Expanding West capacity through innovative solutions and transformational leaders
  • Preventing unplanned extubations together
  • Depression screening of inflammatory bowel disease patients
  • Alarm Fatigue
  • Standardizing ear, nose, and throat (ENT) education, post-op care of otolaryngology patients in acute care
  • MyChart activations
  • Swarm into sepsis: A collaborative approach in a pediatric community emergency center decreasing appointment no-show rates
  • Gastrostomy outcomes and improvement project and registered nurse training
  • Direct Admit Patient Project
  • Decreasing Appointment No Show Rates

“This showcase was encouraging to see people in their element, creating projects that they feel would be beneficial to other departments to have better quality of care for our patients,” Clinical Lead in Pediatric Surgical Services Caitlin Justus said. “Being able to have the opportunity to collaborate with others to gain tips on how we can succeed in our respective areas was very helpful.”

Following the showcase, Chief Quality Officer Dr. Eric Williams provided a few words to recap the information that was presented along with motivating employees to continue overcoming risk, meeting national guidelines and adopt other strategies they may have learned during those two hours.

“Patient safety is a large part of patient experience,” Williams said. “You cannot manage quality from one central space. It starts with your areas successfully providing tools to the rest of the campus that can ultimately enhance quality throughout the organization.”

Click here to learn more about each quality project.

On October 14, Texas Children’s Hospital Specialty Care – Sugar Land began seeing patients in its newly expanded Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Clinics located on the first floor.

This expansion makes it more convenient for patients to receive care and allows the staff to work in a more spacious area. Originally the clinic operated in two separate areas and today patients can receive x-rays and exams on the same floor. Orthopedic and Sports Medicine providers will move to the first floor, and the second floor will be for additional growth.

“It’s going to be a huge patient satisfier when it comes to our day-to-day flow,” Assistant Director of Ambulatory Services for the West and South Region, Betsy Sanford said. “Patients will no longer have to move from one floor to another to receive care, so we are all really excited for this new space.”

This is the first phase of the opening that includes eight exam rooms, a cast room with three spaces, two x-ray rooms, ultrasound, and a Quest Lab drawing station, for Texas Children’s Patients only.

One of the first patients seen was 17-year-old Marisa Garza who had been experiencing pain in her knees after years of performing difficult stunts on her local dance team.

“Her sophomore and junior years on the team she was required to execute moves that forced her to constantly slam on her knees to the ground, and over the years it has taken a toll on her,” her mother, Jessica Garza said. “As a former Texas Children’s employee and parent of patients over the past several years, I know first-hand the quality of care that is provided.”

Within the hour, Garza was checked in, her vitals were taken, and she was x-rayed and examined. With the additional space, the clinic expects to see more sports medicine patients once staff grows.

Texas Children’s Hospital Specialty Care locations provide many of the same pediatric subspecialty services available at our three hospital locations, just closer to home for patients and their families.

“It’s like having the Mark A. Wallace Tower in the community,” medical manager Allyson Jackson, RN, BSN said. “I really want people to understand how effective the clinic is for those that are in the community. The more we continue to grow, the more effective we can be.”

Phase two of this expansion is expected to open early next year and will include a new Sports Physical Therapy gym.

Click here for more information about the Specialty Care – Sugar Land and Texas Children’s Orthopedics.