Child and Family- Centered care conquering Serbian children's hospitals
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Founding Story
Dragana
Nikolic
Partnerstvo za zdravlje
More than 5 years
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Operating for 1‐5 years
Our goal is to make the hospital experience less stressful, traumatic or painful for children and families and improve the quality of care by equipping pediatric staff with knowledge about children’s development, needs and rights and helping them to apply Child and Family centered health care principles in every day practice. We are educating health care providers on children’s rights, to know to recognize the stress and anxiety at children and their parents caused by hospitalization, to reduce stress, how to prepare children for medical procedures, how to lead appropriate communication with children and parents, how to asses and manage pain (no pharmacologically). It means enabling play and learning in hospitals, providing medical play as a way to prepare children for procedures.
The concepts of child and family-centered care was the first time introduced in Serbia in 2009 by the Suisse NGO Partnerships in Health and the Child Life Department of the Johns Hopkins Child Life Department together with the Serbian NGO Partnerstvo za zdravlje. The Ministry of Health of Serbia reviewed and approved “A Child- Centered Health Care Trainer Manual” (Schwethelm, Capello, Brylske, & Munn, 2010), the project and the approach. A Baseline survey was completed with 22 Serbian hospitals. A 5-day trainer course with 6 Serbian and 2 Macedonian hospital teams was conducted in May 2010. 100 staff and 60 last year nursing students have been trained in seven modules and received monitoring. Training at one of the two main pediatric centers in Belgrade begins in January 2012. Based on parent input, family information materials are being developed. The trainings have been received with enthusiasm, since they are gradually improving quality of care and provider/parent satisfaction.
Hospital management will institutionalize child-centered services through policies. Pediatric staff, including doctors, in ½ of Serbian hospitals will integrate child-centered principles into daily practice. New information materials will prepare children/parents for hospitalization and common medical procedures, and parents and patients will be involved as feasible in the planning of care. As a result, providers, parents, and patients will be more satisfied with the care. Nursing schools will include the course content into the nursing curriculum. Increasingly, child/family centered becomes the standard approach, with increased family satisfaction. Transfer to neighboring countries is occurring. A network of child-centered practitioners and facilities shares materials and best practices.
Expand to include the two biggest pediatric hospitals and develop parent information materials
Obtain approvals and train at the two referral hospitals, focusing primarily on nursing staff, but inviting also doctors
Using parent input, produce and widely disseminate parent/child-friendly materials on hospitalization/common procedures
Monitor trained staff, discuss obstacles to implementation of new skills and promote problem-solving and networking
Increase public/professional awareness & participation of Serbian hospitals/nursing schools/ professional associations
Engage 1-2 hospitals not involved in the original trainer course and train and monitor staff
Increase interest with the Association of Nursing Schools and, upon invitation, provide pre-service training to nursing students
Reaching out to Ministries of Health of Balkan countries and present approach and teaching materials also to professional assoc
The Ministry of Health of Serbia recognized the need for such initiative in Serbia and became our partner. The Child and Family-centered health care initiative in Serbia was technically supported by specialists from the Johns Hopkins Hospital Child Life Department in Baltimore (USA), Patrice Brylske and Erin Munn, Dr Bettina Schwethelm from Fondation PH Suisse – Partnerships in Health, Switzerland. Two Swiss foundation and a Swiss City supported the development, baseline, and start-up of our activities. Serbian hospitals participate by choice, provide training space, and free their staff.
We are planning to expand our initiative to other Balkan countries since this region still doesn’t use this approach as a standard for providing quality care to children. We recently established contact with Ministry of Health of Montenegro and the country UNICEF office to explore a partnership in implementation of child and family–centered care in MNE.
We are also exploring partnering with the Association of Pediatric Nurses, Slovenia to introduce this approach in the country .
Health Care institutions in Serbia are still governmental, so the support, collaboration and assistance of Ministry of Health of Serbia was very much needed to enter the hospitals and promote the whole project and to recruit the health care staff for trainings and education. Project implementing team is consisted of training teams in each hospital, Partnerstvo za zdravlje staff and international advisors(the manual authors), specialized in child development, child rights and child and family centered care provide additional source of information and support in project implementation in Serbia.
Needs. 1. Collaboration with international professional associations (e.g., Child Life Council, Health Promoting Hospital network, Pediatrics Nursing Associations of Europe (PNAE) help to improve local acceptance. 2. Regional professional network of child-friendly practicioners to increase motivation 3. Collaboration and strengthening of parents-of-sick children associations