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Olivia's Story
November 20, 2007
Schonay knows the halls of Children’s National Medical Center quite intimately. In November of 2004, her 6-month-old daughter, Olivia, transferred to Children’s National Medical Center’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) for what Schonay and her husband, Kevin, suspected was pneumonia. They would soon learn that their little girl was incredibly sick and needed a heart transplant.
For the next 101 days, Kevin and Schonay split their time at Children’s while Olivia remained in the PICU. They found comfort in the staff at Children’s. Everyone from the doctors to the custodial staff, who decided to bring Olivia a balloon each day to make her room festive, supported the family.
"Families know their children best, so it’s important that we recognize them as central to the care we provide our patients," explains Wayne Neal, MAT, RN, who leads the Family-Centered Care Committee at Children’s. "Whatever we do, we have to include the perspective of the family."
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“When a child is in the hospital a family still has to function as a family, and the staff at Children’s understood that,” says Schonay. “They helped us with the little things, like getting prescriptions, and understood that spending the holidays in a hospital is tough on a family.”
Because Olivia was in the hospital over the holidays, the PICU nurses allowed Schonay to take her out of the PICU for a quick family photo in front of the hospital’s Christmas tree.
In March of 2005, Olivia was released from the hospital and the Jones family celebrated their long-awaited Christmas. Then, in September, the family got the call they had been hoping for. When Schonay called the PICU to tell them the good news, cheers erupted in the unit. The little girl they had nicknamed the “PICU Princess” had received her new heart.
Families like Olivia teach Children’s how to better meet the needs of patients and families, which is why Children’s is committed to providing family-centered care in all aspects of service. Through different committees, parents and patients have the opportunity to voice their opinions and identify opportunities to involve the parents in patient care.
One way families’ ideas and needs are getting incorporated is through the East Inpatient Tower, the new addition to Children’s. More than a dozen committees contributed to the planning of the tower, including the East Inpatient Tower Family Involvement Steering Committee. This allowed designers to incorporate ideas from families and patients into the building plans. The committee determined the most important amenities for patient rooms, tested different furniture options and chose soothing color schemes.
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Children's