Archive for the ‘PICU’ Category

Five Question Friday: Dr. Rod Tarrago

Friday, April 26th, 2013

Meet Dr. Rod Tarrago, MD, an intensivist and chief medical information officer at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota.

You have two roles at Children’s. Can you describe them? Having two different but complementary roles at Children’s is one of the best things about my job. I spend about half of my time as a pediatric critical care physician in both pediatric intensive care units. This is where we take care of the sickest kids, ranging in ages from just a few days old up to “kids” in their twenties. While it can be challenging, it’s also extremely rewarding because truly, most kids do get better.  The other half of my time is spent as Childrens’ Chief Medical Information Officer, where my job is to be the “go-between” for Children’s physicians and providers, and the IT department.  I work to make the electronic medical record more efficient, safer, and easier to use.  I also often find myself answering questions and working on technologies that don’t really have anything to do with the electronic medical record such as the online call system and even helping people get their email set up on their iPhones!

Dr. Rod Tarrago

What fascinates you about the intersection of medicine and technology? In this day and age, there really is no separating medicine and technology. One could argue that being comfortable using the electronic medical record is just as important as knowing how to use a scalpel or knowing which antibiotic to use. We are now moving into an age where we are relying more and more on electronic data to tell us about our patients, and tell us how well we are doing in treating our patients. That is one of the most exciting aspects of my job — being involved with technology has really opened doors to many opportunities to improve our quality and safety.

What drew you to pediatrics? From the time I decided to go into medicine, I knew I was going to do pediatrics.  Even when I was a teenager and young adult, I was always drawn to kids.  During holiday dinners, I preferred to sit with the kids. It was just a lot of fun. For me the difficult decision initially was which area of pediatrics to pursue.  I entered my pediatrics residency with the intention of becoming a general pediatrician. That changed my second month of residency when I got to do my first PICU rotation. On my first day, I got to take care of a really sick little kid. By the end of the day, my head was spinning, but I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my career — I wanted to become a pediatric intensivist.

What do you enjoy most about your job? For me, the best part of my job is the variety. One day, I can be taking care of a child with a life threatening infection. The next day, I can be standing next to a geneticist teaching her how to enter orders more efficiently. The next, I might be attending the hospital’s quality meeting talking about how to make medication use safer. Most days, I get to do a combination of all of these. It’s challenging, but very rewarding and never boring.

If you weren’t working in medicine, what do you think you’d be doing? This is a tough one. I’ve always loved math and science, so I’m sure I’d be doing something involving these fields. My major in college was biochemistry, so there’s a chance I’d either be working in a biotech company, or maybe even teaching science to kids. After all, it was my high school chemistry teacher who took a child of the 80′s who wanted to be an investment banker and turned me into a science and computer geek (or at least brought out my inner geek)!

Noelle’s story: The danger of one bite

Friday, September 28th, 2012

Noelle Dilley

Noelle Dilley knew the moment she bit into what looked like a chocolate cupcake it was contaminated. Tears streamed down her face as she ran to her mom.

The cupcake had peanut butter in it. Noelle, 10, is severely allergic to peanuts.

She and her family were at a church picnic. The cupcake looked tempting. It would be for most 10-year-old kids. Who would have thought it contained the one ingredient Noelle can’t have.

Noelle was tested and diagnosed with a peanut allergy – among other allergies – when she was around 3 years old after suffering a reaction to a small amount of peanut butter, said her mom, Renae Zaeska. The Atwater, Minn., family was told that with every peanut exposure, the reaction would be worse than the previous one for Noelle.

When Noelle was 5, one bite of a Butterfinger turned into a helicopter ride and a five-day stay at St. Cloud Hospital.

This reaction would be worse, Zaeska thought.

Noelle’s mouth started to burn. He ears ached. Her stomach hurt. On this day – of all days – Zaeska didn’t have Noelle’s EpiPen.

She grabbed Noelle and sped to the emergency room at Meeker Memorial Hospital in Litchfield, Minn. By the time they got there, Noelle’s eyes had started to swell and she began to wheeze. The medical team used an EpiPen and steroids. But Noelle needed additional care.

For the second time in her life, she traveled in a helicopter. She was taken to Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota where she spent 31 harrowing days.

At Children’s, Noelle went into cardiac arrest and CPR was performed. Her heart started pumping again, but her lungs were so inflamed and full of mucous she was unable to use them. She was ultimately put on ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), a technique that provides cardiac and lung support to patients whose heart and lungs are severely distressed.

She underwent surgery, endured numerous procedures including bronchoscopy and was tested time and time again as she recovered.

“After this whole accident, I’m terrified…I pray to God that we never have to go through this again,” Zaeska said. “I wish I could put a bubble around her.”

“For four minutes, she was gone,” she said.

Now, Noelle and her family – who were able to stay at the Ronald McDonald House inside Children’s during the hospitalization– are home, where they belong.

“In the PICU at Children’s, we all have been privileged to care for Noelle and adore her family.  To see her so desperately ill, knowing that her heart and lungs stopped working, to help rescue her from her critical illness, then to see her walk out of this hospital is indescribable. This is exactly why we embrace caring for children,” said Dr. Ken Maslonka, PICU medical director.

The fifth-grader has been home since Sept. 19. She’s working with a tutor at home and continuing physical, occupational and speech therapy before returning to school for half-days.

Noelle’s school has taken various precautions to help protect her and students with food allergies, Zaeska said.

School staff has eliminated peanuts and peanut products in the food served to children, Zaeska said. They’ve created a peanut-free zone for Noelle at lunch. They’ve also added a wash basin where kids can wash their hands before entering the classroom.

The school can’t limit what parents send with their kids, however, Zaeska said.

Noelle’s parents read labels, know which companies use peanuts in food process, and check out which restaurants are “safe” and take steps to prevent cross-contamination.

Their days of dining outside the home will be fewer since Noelle’s hospitalization.

“We’ve told Noelle that we won’t eat out like we used to,” Zaeska said.

According to the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN), nearly 6 million or 8 percent of children have food allergies. Peanuts are a top food allergen.

“The best advice for families with severe food allergies is: know to the best of your ability what your child is allergic to, always be prepared for an acute allergic reaction every moment of every day, do your best to keep your child in a safe environment away from the offending allergens at home, school, restaurants,” Maslonka said.

You can read more about Noelle on CaringBridge.

 

Using technology to keep kids safe

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

This is a post by Dr. Rod Tarrago, a pediatric intensive care physician at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota.  He is also the Chief Medical Information Officer and is proud to admit he’s a computer geek.  He’s been helping improve the care at Children’s through the use of technology and spends most of his time helping other clinicians improve their understanding of the computer system. He’s the proud father of two young boys and future computer geeks. 

Dr. Rod Tarrago

We’ve been using computers to help take care of kids at Children’s for several years. We order medicines, track kids’ vital signs, and look at X-rays on computers. Now, we’re starting to use more advanced technology to make sure we keep kids as safe as possible. Many of the children we treat have complex cases and require various medicines. That can be very confusing and potentially dangerous for those taking care of the patient. Can you imagine trying to keep perfect track of a patient who has more than 30 medicines, especially when doses and times are changing?

Recently, we’ve started using familiar technology – medication scanners – in our Minneapolis Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). The scanners are similar to those used in other industries where a scanner checks a bar code to make sure it’s the right product. In our case, patients and families may have seen our nurses and respiratory therapists “scanning” the kids’ medicines prior to giving them.  Just as we previously were checking our patients’ ID bands to make sure the right medicine was being given to the right child, we’re now using the computers to make sure that it’s the right medicine at the right time with the right dose via the right route to the right patient. Children’s is the first pediatric hospital in the nation to use this technology.

Our nurses, respiratory therapists and information technology departments worked hard to make sure that the rooms were set up correctly and that the scanners worked for all medicines. They even changed the labels to make sure wrinkles were less likely to interfere with the scanning. They also came up with some creative solutions to lower the volume so that the beeping of the scanners wouldn’t wake up the kids at night.

In the busy Minneapolis PICU, nurses scan more than 2000 medications every week, and this has helped us detect several instances in which medications might have been given early or late.

At Children’s our No. 1 priority is to keep our patients safe and help them get better.  By using our new scanner technology to more safely deliver medicine to the kids, we are staying at the forefront of medicine. Over the next few months, we’ll extend this important technology to other units at Children’s.

 

Let’s play ball: Andy returns to baseball after blood clot

Thursday, June 14th, 2012

Andy Walerius

On a perfect spring day, Andy Walerius was crouched behind home plate hand signaling his pitcher and waiting for the next delivery. No one on the field that day could have imagined what was about to happen. Pale and not himself, Andy stood up to tell his dad that he wasn’t feeling well.

Suddenly, he collapsed. In an instant, Andy went from being just another kid on the baseball field to a boy in crisis. Whether there would be another game behind the plate in Andy’s future was less than clear.

Andy, 15, was taken by ambulance that night – May 2 – to Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis, where emergency room doctors ran a series of tests to determine what was wrong.

The next 24 hours would prove harrowing. More than 25 members of Children’s touched this boy’s life.  Andy had a new team.  They were doctors and technicians, nurses and therapists. They were in the pharmacy and at the phones. They screened his visitors and washed his linens. They embraced and informed his parents.

Andy’s care extended to Abbott Northwestern Hospital, our neighboring adult hospital, and ultimately he required the immediate deployment of our ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) team to save his life.

“You’re almost better off having a heart attack than what he had,” said Dr. Stephen Kurachek, an intensivist at Children’s.

Shortly after Andy’s arrival, preliminary tests suggested he might have a blood clot in the lung. Typically, this diagnosis would have been confirmed with a CT angiogram, but Andy’s renal function was so poor that the dye required for the study would have injured his kidneys.

Other studies were performed.  Dr. Chris Hills, cardiologist, alerted Dr. Kurachek of a “potentially lethal” looking echocardiogram. Children’s nuclear medicine and venous doppler staff quickly ran tests.  Andy had a large blood clot in his right leg that created a “shower” of blood clots to both lungs as described by Dr. Sonya Wright, a radiologist at Children’s.

Cases like Andy’s are rare in kids. Limited clots to the lung occur in vulnerable children, but clots to both lungs in a healthy boy that critically impair heart function occur only once every few years, Dr. Kurachek said.

Immediately following the tests, Andy was taken to Abbott via an underground tunnel that connects the two hospitals.

At Abbott, a filter was placed to prevent additional clots from entering the lung circulation and medicine was injected directly into the lungs to dissolve the clots that were obstructing blood flow.  During the procedure, Andy’s heart slowed and then stopped – cardiac arrest. Children’s intensive care team and the Abbott resuscitation team performed full CPR on Andy for 10 minutes before his heart started beating again.

Like one of his nurses, Andy is a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.

Andy was returned to Children’s PICU (pediatric intensive care unit), where the ECMO team had assembled.  He was placed on bypass until his heart function recovered. Dr. Kurachek credits the care coordination among staff throughout Children’s and Abbott with saving Andy’s life.

“In retrospect, there was a cadence to all this. A rhythm. It was like poetry. On this particular day for this particular boy, it happened well,” Dr. Kurachek said.

Andy’s mom, Joan Walerius, agrees.

“I felt like they were two steps ahead of Andy,” she said. “This was a well-oiled machine.”

She’s grateful for the medical care her son received and how Children’s helped her family remain normal during an “abnormal” situation.

Andy’s family was able to stay at the Ronald McDonald House during his 21-day hospitalization. Joan and her husband, Ken, could go to the Family Resource Center to escape the beeps of Andy’s machines, write notes and use the computers to send emails – all while listening to soothing music. During recovery, the Geek Squad even helped Andy Skype with his friends.

“That was a gift,” she said, of the services.

It’s still unclear why blood clots formed in Andy. Months before he collapsed, he recalls having trouble breathing and he tired quickly during baseball. He has asthma and control during exercise was a concern, but he was being treated.

Blood clots can develop for several reasons. Sometimes people are born with a “clotting problem.” Sometimes a simple virus can stimulate the body to make proteins that promote clotting.  Our hematologists will monitor Andy very carefully during the next few months to make sure the clots don’t form again.

“He really escaped this,” Dr. Kurachek remarked. “In retrospect, had he died on the ball field that day, no one would have been surprised.”

Instead, Andy is back on the field with the team he should be with, and he’s healthy. He returned to baseball practice last week, and he played in his first game Monday night.

“Everything is pretty much the same except for the running,” Andy said. “I don’t run as fast.”

“As parents and as guardians of children, there are reasons why we pray,” reflected Dr. Kurachek. “This is one of them.”

To learn more about Andy and his story, visit his CaringBridge journal.

Hello from Brazil: Strong leadership with a focus on quality care

Thursday, April 12th, 2012

Patsy Stinchfield, a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner from Children’s, is in San Jose Rio Preto, Brazil to help the Hospital de Base better control their post-operative infection rates. The following is Patsy’s third update from Brazil.

 

Hola!

It is hard to believe we have been here just four days and three days in the Hospital de Base.  I write this late in the day after a 16 hour day with the amazing CV ICU team at the hospital (that’s what everyone does on their vacation in Brazil, right?!).  The Children’s Heartlink program has a beautiful vision to bring the best cardiovascular care to children and our time here proves that many strides have already been made.

The passion and leadership of Dr. Ulisses Croti, the solo pediatric CV surgeon, is driving best practice in this hospital and the region on many fronts. The multidisciplinary team in this unit loves their work and it shows.  They do have more infections than they should — and we are leaving no stone unturned in trying to find out why — but as usual, there is no smoking gun, but many “fixable” issues.

Our focus this week on infection prevention in the CV ICU and pain management has been so fulfilling.  Dr. Kurachek and I have developed a subtle look we give each other when we realize they are doing a process better than we do in the US.

For example, each patient has a poster up of individual goals for the next shift on where to maintain the blood pressure, etc.  We admire their openness and willingness to take all advice on behalf of patient improvements.  There is no defensiveness or resistance to change.  The focus is clearly on quality care for tiny patients with big heart defects.

The complexities of the surgical procedures and the post-op care are like a great ballet–everyone knows their part and plays it elegantly. There are a number of fine tunings we will offer to get them from good to great but their culture of attention to quality will get them there faster.

Today, Dr. Kurachek provided a formal lecture on pain and sedation and I presented a formal lecture on blood stream infection prevention. We have been hammering the importance of hand hygiene all week and have appreciated the amount of time their ID doc and Infection Control nurse have given us.

We have had numerous conversations with small groups of staff with everything from considering a hospital acquired infection an emergency, to when do you stop antibiotics, to what is Empiric precautions, to what are the Fentanyl versus Morphine considerations (clearly that last one was Kurachek’s!).

What is impressive is the multi-disciplinary turn out for our talks.  My talk had 15 in attendance on the unit including intensivists, cardiologists, housekeeping staff, nursing, techs, therapists, students and infection control specialists.  They were very interested and able to learn together.  I was able to observe in the micro lab as well as the entire sterilization process, which is done well–bar coded and everything!

Dr. Kurachek was able to do morning rounds, meet with a vascular surgeon about non-surgical lymphedema treatment, do his pain talk twice, role play with me on how one points out a potential patient safety risk to a colleague and end the day with our team doing Safety rounds–and that was before dinner!

It has been a great day once again.  Big day tomorrow as we tour the new children’s hospital and help them prepare to prevent risks there.

Ciao for now (that rhymes!)

Patsy

Hello from Brazil: Open-Heart Observations

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

Patsy Stinchfield, a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner from Children’s, is in San Jose Rio Preto, Brazil to help the Hospital de Base better control their post-operative infection rates. The following is Patsy’s second update from Brazil.

 

Hola!

Our time in Brazil has been wonderful.  We finished our second day in the hospital today.  The surgeons, staff and specialists, including the Infection Control team who have devoted much of their week to being with us, have been outstanding.  They are approachable and interested in improving the quality of care they deliver despite their lack of resources.  They ask significant questions and push themselves to think of new ways to deliver care that is affordable.

Here on behalf of the marvelous Children’s Heartlink program, Dr. Kurachek and I are spending 12-13 hour days in the hospital (and then some serious Brazilian fine dining thereafter!).  I spent most of my day observing open heart surgery in the operating room of Dr. Ulisses Croti, a gifted surgeon and fine human being.

I focused on the process and details of the operating room procedures in relation to infection prevention. They do excellent work and have instituted such things as the pre-op and op “Time Out” on behalf of the safety of the patient and the clear goals of the team.  There are several minor suggestions I can offer, but for the most part feel they are doing great care for very, very sick patients.

Dr. Kurachek has been “holding court” in the ICU with all in attendance eagerly learning from him.  His second Heartlink trip here, he is well-known and well-loved, just like at Children’s.  He worked with the large multidisciplinary team to model rounds and the kinds of questions all should be asking each day: “What concerns you personally most about this patient from your perspective?”, etc.

He provided a long formal class on heart/lung hemodynamics that simplified the complexities of these challenging patients.

We have done many whole team dialogues, small group discussions from our fields and many one on one conversations, including with one amazing young Brazilian mother who is preparing to take her trached baby with Down’s syndrome home for the first time after seven months in the hospital. She said she felt comfortable stopping staff and visitors and asking them to please wash their hands before touching her baby knowing how hard he had fought to get to where he was.  She told me “My son is everything to me” and I told her “And you are everything to him”. Such strength from these moms.

Ciao!

Hello from Brazil: Arriving in San Jose Rio Preto

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

Children’s very own Patsy Stinchfield, recent recipient of the prestigious Pediatric Nurse Practitioner of the Year Award, is in San Jose Rio Preto, Brazil to help the Hospital de Base better control their post-operative infection rates. The following is Patsy’s first report from Brazil.

 

Hola!

I have finished my first day in the Hospital de Base in a small town called San Jose Rio Preto.  It is a city of 400,000 people and is surrounded by beautiful farmland.  We are staying at a hotel called none other than, The Saint Paul Hotel!

I am consulting in the public hospital here called Hospital de Base, an 800 bed hospital with a full pediatric cardiovascular surgery ICU.  They are having trouble with post-operative infections and are seeking help for Infection Control considerations from me and my great traveling companion, Dr. Steven Kurachek, a Harvard trained pulmonologist who is consulting on intensive care management.

It was a marvelous day, filled with observations of wonderful care by smart, compassionate people (pediatric cardiologists, surgeon, anesthesiologists, nurses, nurse technicians and respiratory therapists).  They are a warm and open group, eager to continually take the best care possible of their very vulnerable patients some of whom were so malnourished it was heart-breaking.

We made rounds on their 4 patients in the cardiovascular ICU and 3 patients in their step-down area.  We observed their care, listened, asked questions, engaged the team in dialogue about how they prevent pneumonia in ventilated patients and tried to play CSI with where their systems are breaking down to cause their patients to have more infections than most other hospitals. It was “Magnifico!”  We found some problem areas, but also found some practices better than we do in the US.  As usual, the teachers will come back having learned more than they taught.

One unexpected surprise was to tour a beautiful manufacturing facility near the hospital called Braile Biomedica which makes 450 different products mostly for heart surgery. (Think Brazilian Medtronic).  We met with Dr. Domingo Marcolino Braile, the “retired” cardiologist who founded this company with brilliant engineers and his experience doing cardiovascular surgery by knowing there is always a better way to do things.  We watched the staff trim bovine tricuspid valves and hand sew them in preparation for patients needing a valve replacement.  Simply amazing work.

In the evening, our hosts, Dr. Ulisses Croti (pediatric cardiology surgeon) and his wife, Dr. Lilian Beani (a neonatologist) are intent on showing us a good time in Brazil.  Tonight we went with 4 of the cardiology team staff to a traditional Brazilian beef house (think Fogo de Chao X 10) where they bring the hot meats and carve individual slices at the table.  (After a day in the cardiac ICU we all passed on the BBQ chicken hearts…).

They speak Portugese, which has a little similarity to Spanish but is very fast with different accents.  Instead of HOla it is hoLA for hello.  We have 3 medical interpreters who are amazing because they know all the medical technical language and do simultaneous (they prefer we just talk, not pause for them) English to Portugese conversation (we all wear little ear pieces).

After just one day, we have a list of suggestions as well as recognitions for work well done.  We also have a list of things we want to improve back at Children’s based on what we see here and know we can improve at home.  We all deal with the same pathogens and people problems no matter where in the world we work.  It is fascinating!

I will try to write a bit everyday.

Ciao!

Preventing infections in pediatric intensive care units

Wednesday, February 1st, 2012

Consumer Reports, is generally known for reviewing shiny new things we all want, like cell phones, TVs and cars. But in their most recent edition, they featured a story about things we cannot see and do not want – blood stream infections in children.

The report reviewed the central line bloodstream infection data from 2010 in pediatric intensive care units (PICU’s) of 92 children’s hospitals around the country and then ranked these hospitals based on their infection rate.

In the report, the PICU at Children’s – St. Paul was one of just five PICU’s reporting zero bloodstream infections in 2010, earning them the highest possible rating. The PICU at Children’s – Minneapolis was one of 29 hospitals who earned the second highest rating because they reported less than half as many blood stream infections as the national average.

Children’s has a track record for this kind of success. From 2006 to 2010, our PICUs combined had a 91 percent reduction in hospital acquired central line bloodstream infections.

Children’s is proud of our PICU staff for being able to accomplish this significant feat. In fact, at this writing, the PICU at Children’s –St. Paul has accomplished 891 days without a central line blood stream infection – that’s over two and a half years! What is fantastic about this is not where we land in the rankings, statistics, or even the accolades that go with this report, but the fact that patients – babies, children and teens – came to us for care and got that without acquiring a devastating, even life-threatening, infection.

We are the first to admit we are not perfect.  Blood stream infections continue to be an issue that demands vigilance.  We strive to replicate the St. Paul PICU success in all of our departments because our patients deserve a safe, healing environment. We know that every statistic on a report represents a child, and a family.  It requires constant attention to provide safe care, especially when it comes to the invisible pathogens that can take a life.

So how are we doing this? Children’s has a culture of patient safety that believes even one hospital acquired infection is unacceptable. Our ultimate goal is to get to zero bloodstream infections and then to stay there. It’s a lofty goal because we live in a world of germs; ICU patients are particularly vulnerable. But, we have already shown we know how to prevent blood stream infections through leadership commitment, bedside staff expertise, constant vigilance, measuring, reporting and by transparently sharing our results.

Our staff who insert central lines go through an insertion checklist based on best practices much like an airline pilot goes through a pre-flight checklist. Our nursing staff maintain the cleanliness of the patient and the central lines 24/7 and continue to expertly manage the care of each child, so not one leaves our hospitals sicker than when they came.

Our rounding teams ask themselves daily if central lines are still needed because, as each day passes, the lines become a greater infection risk. Parents and visitors are taught to properly wash their hands when entering a patient’s room, before and after touching the child, and family members are encouraged to speak up when they have concerns.

To ensure that we continue our transparency, departments such as infection prevention and control, quality, lab, pharmacy and many others work tirelessly behind the scenes to monitor, measure and report our progress – sharing what we know, learning from it and constantly improving.

I’m proud to be part of the team effort at Children’s that allowed us to achieve this remarkable recognition. Together we will continue to work on behalf of our little ones who count on us for only the best care.

Patsy Stinchfield, MS, CPNP
Director
Infection Prevention and Control

Pediatric Intensive Care Units at Children’s

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota has new Pediatric Intensive Care Units (PICU) on both our Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses. The PICU is where we care for the most critically ill children and provide the highest level of expertise with 24-hour in-house coverage by pediatric intensivists and primarily one-to-one pediatric nursing care by nurses skilled in high-intensity therapies and interventions, medication administration, and the latest technology. Learn more about our pediatric intensive care program and see what we offer to patients and families in our new units featuring all private patient rooms.

New St. Paul PICU opens to patients and families on Monday

Friday, August 5th, 2011

The new Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) Pediatric Intensive Care Unit opens to patients and families on Monday. Highlights of the new unit include:

  • 12 private patient rooms designed to make it easier for families to sty with their child
  • Four separate family sleep rooms
  • Large family waiting room