Meals “at Your request” - Johns Hopkins Children's Center

house and to satellite sites to come.
“This lab is really set up with good hardware
and software that has the capacity of
seeing an image anywhere, at any time,
from anyone,” says Spevak. “That’s important
in clinical care because expertise varies
from center to center and pediatric cardiology
program to program, and you even
have expertise here in say, congenital heart
cardiac imaging. So we can be an expert
consultation service (to other centers) in a
minute. We’re also using our center to train
technologists at other hospitals.”
Ben Carson sees a similar technological
outreach from OR to overseas coming
down the road: “The new operating
rooms are very technologically advanced.
I did nine cases last week, and to be able
to record what you’re doing, with just a
simple maneuver, have it sent to a central
source where you can then upload it to your
computer in your office, make slides, do
various presentations, makes access to this
information to other people much greater,
so now it’s not just what you’re learning,
it’s what you’re able to transmit to others…
the fact that we’ll be able to communicate
with medical centers in Nigeria, in Israel,
in Dublin, in South America, in New Zealand,
this is the wave of the future.”
Guaranteeing that future will take equal
parts money and new faculty, and the new
Children’s Center may well play a key role
in attracting both researchers and trainees.
“The National Institutes of Health is
extremely pleased we have this new opportunity,”
says Pediatric Allergy & Immunology
Division Chief Robert Wood.“They
now know we have the space and resources
to conduct our studies in the best possible
environment, which can only help to secure
new funding opportunities.”
“The opportunity to show current and
future residents that the space in which
they would be caring for patients conveys
the high level of respect that this building
does for patients is a wonderful message
for us to be sending to applicants,” says
Julia McMillan, vice chair for Education
and director of the Pediatric Residency
Program. “And for the residents who are
here, now (through the transition from
the CMSC) it says we knew the old space
didn’t convey the respect we felt for our
patients, and we fixed it. It took us a while,
but now we’ve fixed it; it isn’t just something
we talk about, it’s something we actually
did.”
It’s a change that could make history. n
Nursing in a
New World
before moving into The Charlotte R.
Bloomberg Children’s Center, psychiatry
nurses took patients, two at a
time, to see their new unit. Amazed
by its size and amenities, one young
patient exclaimed, “i don’t know how
anyone could be depressed over here.
The view is so beautiful.”
For pediatric nurse Jena Smith, the
new home for her patients and their
families indeed feels brighter and
calmer. “i was so looking forward to
coming over to the new building, to
a world with less chaos and noise,”
says Smith.
in Bloomberg Children’s Center,
gone are the old days of crowded
patient rooms and corridors and
the unrelenting cacophony of overhead
paging, phones and multiple
monitors. A quiet nurse-call system,
sound-absorbing building materials,
decentralized supply systems and allprivate
rooms have created a soothing
environment.
“The new decentralized care
environment with single rooms is
remarkably better for children, families,
and the nurses,” says Director of
Pediatric nursing Shelley Baranowski.
“it provides a more comfortable experience
for families and improves safety
with less distractions and noise.”
via the new building’s wi-Fi and realtime
tracking technology, nurses and
other specialists and essential equipment
can be located instantly. with
telemetry now in every playroom,
patients can wear wireless monitors,
allowing them to visit playrooms and
walk the hallways. Sophisticated lighting
systems make it easier for nurses to
perform bedside procedures with even
greater precision.
Also, to complement the move to
this new world, pediatric nurses last
winter launched an interpersonal skills
training program called the “Language
of Caring: Heart-to-Heart Communication,”
designed to improve
communication between staff and families,
a component of the Children’s
Center’s commitment to patient- and
family-centered care. n –Wendell Smith
Summer 2012 13