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When the newly born conjoined twins, Faith and Rose, arrived in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Children's Hospital New Orleans on a winter evening in 1999, it was clear little Rose would not make it. She lacked the internal organs to survive on her own.
Faith’s small body was working hard to sustain them both, and a separation surgery would be necessary to give Faith a chance at life. As Janin Pierce grasped Faith’s tiny hand that night, she couldn’t have imagined how this encounter would change her life.
As an undergraduate student at Virginia Tech, Morgan Zumbaugh took a job cleaning glassware in a laboratory on campus for some extra cash.
Eight years later, she left with her PhD.
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Though she initially had no interest or background in scientific research,
Zumbaugh was inquisitive. She began attending staff meetings and peppering others in the lab with questions about their work and the nature of the research. Those interactions helped lay the foundation for her future.
Automation, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence — once only seen in science fiction, these futuristic technologies are increasingly becoming realities.
Children’s hospitals are integrating them into the fabric of their organizations to make them “smarter.”
In many respects, pediatric nursing has never been tougher.
Staffing shortages, stress and burnout, societal tensions. And then the pandemic hit.
But, in the process of compiling this report, we came across a remarkable observation from one of our chief nursing officers (CNOs) that so perfectly sums everything up.
It’s not often that David Higginson gets the opportunity to
meet the patient families who benefit from his work. But
when he does, it’s always special.
“As a computer guy who’s often stuck in the basement doing math, the chance to see how the algorithm we built improved a family’s quality of life—it’s the ultimate reward,” says Higginson, executive vice president and chief innovation officer at Phoenix Children’s.
It’s almost like a storyline from the pages of a comic book: mild-mannered children enter a hospital’s operating room and emerge as superheroes.
Although a fantastic tale, it does represent the feelings created by the specialized head dressings that Matthew Greives crafts for the craniofacial surgery patients he treats.
It's the all-too-common scenario that scientists dread.
Gleaning insight from previous testing in animals, Brian Shariffi hypothesized that the administration of insulin would increase indices of blood flow in the human brain. Using transcranial doppler (TCD) ultrasound, Shariffi and his team painstakingly performed local and peripheral insulin administration methods on their test subjects.
They meticulously collected the ensuing data and found … no change whatsoever in indices of cerebral blood flow levels.
When a child coughs half a world away, there’s a decent chance Devan Jaganath hears it.
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Jaganath is among teams of researchers using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to collect and analyze the sounds produced by a child’s cough.
Though his research focuses on diagnosing and treating tuberculosis in children in developing countries, the technology could soon become a fixture of pediatric medicine in the United States.
This is an executive summary I produced outlining the results of a landmark national study aimed at improving care for children with medical complexity enrolled in Medicaid. The documents were integral in informing key stakeholders and guiding policymakers to advance the organization’s work.
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There are three million children in the United States with complex medical conditions, and the current health care system is not equipped to provide them optimal care.
This is the nation’s most vulnerable population with highly variable health care needs that often are not adequately met by the traditional health care system. Family resources are stretched thin bearing the brunt of coordinating care for their children.
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