MDNews - Long Island

increase in the volume of patients and improved patient care. "Over the past 12 years that I've been at Stony Brook Children's, I have seen a dramatic change in the pediatric emergency care and the general care we provide," Dr. Kaplan says. "When I first started, there was no pediatric emergency department and only two pediatric emergency specialists. Now there are eight pediatric emergency specialists, three pediatricians and two pediatric nurse practitioners." (To learn more about Stony Brook Children's Emergency Department, see the column on right.) CARE THAT GOES BEYOND THE CLINICAL SPACE Stony Brook Children's Hospital is also dedicated to meeting all patient needs. Child Life Specialists play a particularly important role within a pediatric hospital, by assisting children and their families in understanding and adapting to a diagnosis and necessary treatment. In the Emergency Department, for example, these specialists help patients receive care that's as "ouchless" as possible. In addition to using toy medical equipment to engage children in medical play, they also employ a Kitten Scanner, a miniature toy version of a CT scanner, that helps to alleviate the anxiety that can come with the confinement and noise of a CT scan or MRI. By using this realistic scanner, children can discover how a real one works and learn why it's important to lie still during what can often be a long procedure. "Child Life Specialists help to make sure patients and their families are engaged and that their psy- chosocial needs are cared for," Dr. Kaplan says. "They help us to alleviate pain and distract children and their families during what would normally be painful and stressful procedures." "When we built the children's hospital, we sepa- rated the floors," Dr. Milana says. "Now we have a floor that's dedicated to the care of younger children and another for adolescents. As part of that, we also separated our Child Life spaces to provide children with resources that would appeal to them. So, that consists of toys and games for younger children and games that are geared toward teens." KEEPING KIDS ON TOP OF THEIR SCHOOLWORK Because many children who are undergoing medical care are often temporarily taken away from their academic work, Stony Brook Children's also offers resources that help kids continue to learn and develop. An on-site classroom staffed by a certi- fied teacher helps to ensure each child's education Advanced Care in the Case of an Emergency IN ORDER TO provide truly comprehensive children's health care, a hospital must incorporate specialized emergency services as part of its overall spectrum of care. At Stony Brook Children's Hospital, pediatric patients have access to advanced clinical care and emergency capabilities, provided within a space that's separate from the adult Emergency Department. "All of our faculty have trained specifically in pediatrics and in pediatric emergency medicine, whereas providers at other facilities may have only trained in emergency medicine, which means they had approximately six weeks of pediatric training every year," says Carl Kaplan, MD, Interim Chief of the Pediatric Emergency Department at Stony Brook Children's. "Most of our providers have had at least three years of pediatric-specific training." Beyond medical providers with advanced pediatric clinical training, patients and their families also benefit from a depth of experience unparalleled at most general hospitals. The Emergency Department at Stony Brook Children's sees a patient volume of around 25,000 patients per year, while a community emergency department might see only a small fraction of that number. Stony Brook Children's has also been awarded designation as a Level I Pediatric Trauma Center, the only one of its kind in the county. "This level of care entails the ability to treat the most severely injured or ill infants, children and young adults, without having to transfer care to another hospital," Dr. Kaplan says. "That means that in the event of a Level I pediatric trauma, we have a trauma surgeon at the bedside within 15 minutes of the patient's arrival. We have a team of specialists that can be brought to the bedside, and all of our staff have training in advanced life support, including all of the physicians and all of the nurses." These capabilities mean that the hospital is the receiving center for the most severely injured or seriously ill children in the county — and the hospital receives patient transfers from other area hospitals. "At Stony Brook Children's, in the pediatric ED, we are able to provide very comprehensive care for the sickest and most injured kids in the county," Dr. Kaplan says. "For that reason, if one of my children needed to go to the ED, I would choose to bring them here." Dr. Kaplan oversees the hospital's dedicated Pediatric Emergency Department, which is staffed 24/7 by a team of pediatric emergency medicine- trained physicians, acute care pediatricians, pediatric nurse practitioners, pediatric nurses and support staff. M D N E W S . C O M /// M D N E W S L O N G I S L A N D ■ 2 0 21 0 9

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