Dear team,
Let’s start this newsletter off with a big congratulations! UVA Children’s is the #1 Children’s Hospital in Virginia, ranked by U.S. News & World Report. Also ranked among the top 50 nationally in their fields were five UVA Children’s specialties. A special shoutout to Neonatology, Cardiology & Heart Surgery, Diabetes & Endocrinology, Orthopedics, and Urology. We want to thank each and every team member at UVA Health for your continued dedication and hard work.
This month, we’re focusing on self-care. We are currently working on system changes and efficiencies that we hope will make your work lives easier. While our mission focuses on patient care, we encourage you to think about yourself and listen to what you need, as well.
There are 5 key factors when it comes to self-care: physical, social, mental, spiritual, and emotional. We love the idea of making a self-care plan, which starts with identifying one small step at a time and scheduling time into your day to focus on your needs. (Learn more here) Please let us know how we can support you in your self-care journey.
We hope you had a wonderful 4th of July!
Jim, Liz, Karin, Billy, Ann, Jennifer, Leigh & Jef
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Best Wishes, Dr. Stephen Early!
A note from the Department of Pediatric Otolaryngology team.
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Check out the latest edition of the NICU Newsletter: Summer 2021
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Learn more about the latest updates on epidemiology, variants, vaccines, and more.
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Together We Make a Difference |
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Theme of the Month:
Self-Care
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Quotes of the Week
July 5: "Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
July 12: "Self-care is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation." ~ Audre Lorde, feminist and civil rights leader
July 19: "It’s not your job to fit yourself into a box. That’s a cat’s job." ~ Unknown
July 26: "Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you." ~ Unknown
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Mark Your Calendar
Professional Recognition & Health Awareness Days
- Cord Blood Awareness Month
- International Group B Strep Throat Awareness Month
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Juvenile Arthritis Awareness Month
- National Cleft and Craniofacial Awareness and Prevention Month
- Independence Day (July 4)
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World Hepatitis Day (July 28)
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Check out the July calendar from Action for Happiness. This month is all about resilience and understanding how we can build skills that will help us to bounce back.
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Reflections & Expressions |
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Haiku Trio
by Drs. Michael and Joanne Mendoza
Children's Hospital
Welcomes July intern class
Happy you've joined us!
Yay, Covid vaccine
We have weathered the storm well
Nice to see faces
Charlottesville hot days
Cold beers, food trucks, and good friends
Fridays after five
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The goal of Expressions & Reflections is to help us reconnect with our purpose in medicine. We want to provide a space for sharing lessons learned within our Children's Hospital. Topics could include, but are not limited to: wellness, racism, violence, bias, resiliency, advocacy, burnout, equality, LGBTTQQIAAP, kindness, mistreatment, mentorship, peer support, or any fascinating, sad, happy, brave, complex, or inspiring experiences. This feature can be prose (with a limit of 500 words), poetry or art. Please submit to Dr. Joanne Mendoza jm7zg@virginia.edu
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Photo: ANDREW SHURTLEFF, THE DAILY PROGRESS |
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Fore the Kids Golf Tournament
The Fore the Kids golf event took place on Monday, June 21st at Birdwood. The event has already raised more than $75,000. The tournament was the first in-person fundraiser UVA Children’s has been able to hold since the beginning of the pandemic. Money raised is going to the Family-Centered Care program, which helps families pay for food, travel, housing, and other emergency needs.
Check out the news from the event:
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Children's Miracle Network Updates
- The Costco campaign, with locations in Charlottesville and Harrisonburg, raised $63,000 during the month of May. They raised money through grocery tote sales, member donations, and local business CMN balloon sponsorships.
- The Walmart and Sam’s Club campaign will run from June 28 – July 25. Shoppers are able to round up their purchase or donate a chosen amount to support UVA Children’s. Many of our locations also participate in many community fundraising events.
- The GIANT/Martins campaign is currently live through July. Customers are able to round up their purchase to support UVA Children’s.
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We are excited to share that the food pantry in the Battle Building is now open!
Food insecurity affected ~10% of Virginia families prior to the COVD-19 pandemic and then rose to 22.5% in the spring of 2020. We know that families with children are harder hit by food insecurity based on national figures, and as clinicians, we frequently see how limited access to nutritious foods makes achieving treatment goals more difficult.
Dr. Jeff Gander wanted to address this problem head-on. With the assistance of Dr. Amy Wrentmore (pediatrician), Lashanna Hicks (social worker), Tegan Medico (dietitian), and Olivia Obertello (dietitian), UVA Children’s partnered with Charlottesville’s Local Food Hub to provide food-insecure patients with deliveries of fresh and local food. The team also coordinated the development of an on-site food pantry in the Battle Building to put non-perishable food in the hands of children when they come for their appointments.
Routine food insecurity screening will be piloted in the 5C and 6C neighborhoods beginning in July, but the pantry is open to any patient in need, visiting any clinic. Just ask either the 5C or 6C staff for a copy of the pantry “shopping list”. Families can use these shopping lists to make selections from the pantry. We ask that staff members fill the grocery bags for families to minimize moving patients throughout the building.
We have served 20 families since January and are excited to continue to serve our community with the launch of the food pantry.
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This year, the Department of Pediatrics held the Inaugural “QI Showcase” highlighting the work that residents, fellows, and faculty have been doing to provide effective, coordinated, collaborative, evidence-based, and patient- and family-centered care.
The showcase included short presentations and platform presentations that covered a diversity of topics and included multidisciplinary teams. Three judges, (Dr. Tracey Hoke, Chief of Quality and Performance Improvement; Dr. Bahnsen Miller, Assistant Professor of General Medicine, Geriatrics and Palliative Care; and Ms. Shantal Savage, Performance Improvement Coach) selected a Best Project Winner who received a certificate and monetary prize.
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Dr. Marium Khan, a second-year resident at the time of the competition, was the winner of the Inaugural Best Project Award for “Pausing total parenteral nutrition to decrease abnormal newborn screens: a NICU quality initiative.” Hear more about Dr. Khan's project:
Q: Dr. Khan, what inspired this project?
A: Dr. Brooke Vergales had the idea for this project and I was very excited when I heard about it and asked to join! It was the impact this would have on not just our patients but also on their parents/family members. We have all had worried parents in our clinic and having an abnormal newborn screen just adds to the stresses related to having a newborn at home. I have also had several parents who continued to be worried about the initial abnormal newborn screen results even after repeat testing had proven the initial one to be a false positive. Thus, I was inspired by the fact that this project could not only save our patients from unnecessary blood work but also eliminate a source of worry for their family members.
Q: What were the patient outcomes that mattered and how did you achieve them?
A: We were looking at the rate of abnormal newborn screens in neonates on total parenteral nutrition (TPN) on our unit. We aimed to decrease this rate by pausing the TPN for a few hours, which helped reduce the amount of protein in the blood, prior to collecting the newborn screen. By decreasing the rate of abnormal newborn screens, we also subsequently decreased the number of blood draws per patient.
Q: Who made up the team that executed this project? Who mentored you?
A: Dr. Brooke Vergales and Dr. Jacylyn Wiggins both mentored me on this project; with Dr. Vergales being the primary mentor. The team also could not operate without the entire NICU staff collaborating with us to make this project a success!
Q: What changes have taken place as a result of this project?
A: This project has led to a change in the practice of how the newborn screen is collected in our NICU; a work flow chart was created to streamline the process as much as possible. This project has also resulted in not only a benefit to our patients by reducing the amount of false positive results and subsequently a decrease in blood draws, but has also had a cost-benefit for the hospital by decreasing the amount of newborn screen cards used.
Q: What advice would you give to others interested in undertaking an outcomes improvement project?
A: QI projects require team work and patience; we realized that even if we planned out a certain timeline sometimes it is difficult to achieve exactly that and working together on a problem really helps in finding an effective solution.
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UVA Children’s Inpatient Family Meals Program |
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Did you know the UVA Children’s Inpatient Family Meals program provides one meal for family members per day?
The meals program is a wonderful amenity for our families. It helps satisfy the basic human need for food during a trying time. The meals are funded by our generous donors and partners in the community!
In March we provided 1,860 meals, April 2,100 meals, and in May 2,170 meals. Due to the revised visitor policy, we are on track to provide 3,000 meals to our patient’s family members in June.
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#1 Children’s Hospital in Virginia |
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"Over the past several years, we have focused on doing good work, creating an environment of continuous improvement and teamwork, and building out our Family Centered Care programs. This hard work compliments the world-class specialties UVA Children’s offers. Being named #1 in Virginia is a great affirmation that we executed on our plan. There are so many more wonderful and exciting things to come for UVA Children’s. I am proud to be a part of it."
-Karin Skeen, Administrator, UVA Children's
“I’ll be honest, we have always known that we were the #1 Children’s Hospital in Virginia, but now that US News and World Report has started to formally rank children’s hospitals by state and region, it is great to make it official. It also helps the word get out across the Commonwealth and across multiple states. Looking at the rankings, we came in ahead of some much bigger, freestanding children’s hospitals – it’s not about the building, but the people inside it!”
-Dr. Jim Nataro, Department of Pediatrics Chair
“We are so excited and thankful to have our Children’s Hospital team members recognized with this great honor. Dr. Nataro, Dr. Matherne, and Karin Skeen have led UVA Children’s Hospital so effectively over the last several years and have created a culture of continuous improvement and teamwork that has set us up for great success. All of our Children’s Hospital team members deserve so much credit, for working together to provide such outstanding care to all of our patients and their families. It is a very exciting time to be the UVA Children’s Hospital!”
-Dr. Billy Petersen, Associate Chief Medical Officer UVAMC, Children's Hospital
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Congratulations, Margy Sennett! |
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UVA Children’s own Margy Sennett was recognized as Nurse of the Year by the National Hemophilia Foundation. This is a remarkable national honor for someone who has been a bedrock of our Children’s Hospital for many years. Congratulations, Margy! |
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Thank You, Books at Birth Yes! Bag Stuffing Party Volunteers! |
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Earlier this month, six volunteers from Volunteer Service, School of Medicine, and UVA HR stuffed over 1,000 books into cloth bags for the Books at Birth Yes! bag stuffing party.
Over one lunch break, they made record time - 1 hour 20 minutes!
Once bags are stuffed, they are placed on a cart, and are provided to Mother Baby. They are given to new Mothers that discharge with their newborns.
The books were donated by George and Jeanna Beker of the Soho Center.
A huge thank you to our donors and our wonderful volunteers!
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Volunteers: Peggy Williams, Rita Minerd, Sally Jackson, Reyna Huang, Nejwa Labban, Andrew Burns |
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NICU
- Hannah Fox received her Master of Science in Nursing Degree
- Naomi Rademeyer received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing Degree
Mother/Baby
- Robin Longo received her Clinical Nurse Leader Master’s Degree
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The Division of Neurodevelopmental Peds celebrates the graduation of their Fellow Anna Jesus.
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Have a story idea? Let us know!
Working on an exciting new project? Want to spread the word about your clinic? Know a team member that should be recognized? We can help!
WCH Communication and Culture Workgroup
The WCH Communication and Culture workgroup focuses on team-building, keeping us all in touch with the meaning of our work, giving us all common language and common goals, and helping to ensure that every member of our team, regardless of role, feels welcomed, included, respected, heard, and valued. We are always seeking new members, new ideas, and feedback!
Please help us spread the word
Know someone who would enjoy our newsletter? Please forward this email. Want to be added to the list to receive monthly updates? Please email us.
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