Jack Johnson, Please Play A Set At Sickkids In August

Jack, when your 2008 summer tour brings you to Oro just outside Toronto in August, please drop in at Sickkids and play a set in Canada's largest pediatric hospital. We celebrate your passion for green energy, this visit would get the red going in a place where there is a lot of blue, a lot of little miracles, where a beautiful child dies almost every day. Where children and parents surf the scariest waves life will ever blow their way. We first heard your music when one of Sasha's core nurses loaned us Curious George and we got silly and played it every bed time for 6 months. And everything was upside down and we wanted to share this love with everyone and we didn't want this feeling to go away. Now, almost two years after our little Sasha went to the Valhala of surgical heroes at age two you again reach in deep with go on. We watched Sasha fade slowly to a place we couldn't go, bound by blood and love from the moment we play you to our children. Your songs lay their fingers on our souls.

"Does that sound strange?"

Diane Flacks checked in with us a year and a half after Catherine Dunphy visited in August 2006. I was happy that Diane focused on Pamela's story and that between candid moments you can see how parents grieve differently. We can argue about almost anything, including shopping lists, and I was about to say I don't remember any arguments between us over Sasha or her care but that isn't true. Small conversations bubble to the surface of my memory about whether to talk more with so and so, or for me not to take off an evening and go for beers with friends. Pamela's strength and presence let me checkout in some respects, at times. Each night she handed me a reminder list as she left around 11pm to endure sleepless night, pregnant and alone in our house before returning for another full long day at Sickkids. Weathering The Unimaginable was published in Saturday's Toronto Star.

2008 Labatt Heart Centre Nurse Award

In preparation for Nursing Centre Awards of Excellence this Tuesday May 13, the fund and Sickkids staff selected two nurses who demonstrated excellence in their family-centred care practise. A big thanks to the 2008 committee comprising Lori Burton, Christine Clark, Misty Earle, Linda Fazari, Carrie Heffernan, Tessie Koonthanam, Kathleen Johnston, Dr Jennifer Russell and Sherry Reestevens. It was an amazing collection of specialized paediatric expertise; almost all had cared for Sasha at one time. Tessie and Cecilia Hyslop promoted the award in CCU and 4, Trisha Sutton wrote two nomination letters and Cecilia wrote a nomination and organized the certificate printing and framing so that these awards look like all the other nursing centre award certificates.

2008 Patient Safety Symposium - Communication is Key

Sickkids Hospital's 4rth Annual Partners in Pediatric Patient Safety Symposium organized by Dr Anne Matlow and Polly Stevens on June 11 offers much to anyone interested in effective patient and family and staff partnership. The Sasha Bella Fund is thrilled to support the collective work of the patient safety committees. Registration deadline is May 16, cost is $150 (some bursaries available) and here is the exciting list of speakers.

COMMUNICATION IS KEY!

7:15 am Registration & Breakfast

8:00 am WELCOME Mary Jo Haddad, CEO The Hospital for Sick Children

8:05 am HEALTHIER CHILDREN. A BETTER WORLD: USING COMMUNICATIONS TO IMPROVE THE HEALTH OF CHILDREN IN THE THIRD WORLD Gord Martineau CityTV, Toronto

9:00 am COMMUNICATION FOR INFECTION CONTROL: THE WORDS WE USE Anne Matlow, MD SickKids

9:45 am Break

COMMUNICATING BETTER WITH OTHER PROVIDERS

10:15 am THE IMPACT ON TEAMWORK Lorelei Lingard, PhD SickKids Learning Institute

11:15 am THE IMPACT OF USING STANDARDIZED COMMUNICATION TOOLS (SBAR) FOR PATIENT SAFETY Karima Velji, RN, PhD Toronto Rehabilitation Institute

12:00 pm Lunch

1:00 pm WE NEED TO TALK: SAFETY AND COMMUNICATION Robert Buckman, MB, PhD Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto. Toronto Book author, “How to Break Bad News”

2:00 pm I AM THE VOICE OF MY CHILD Elaine Tal-El, MA A.V. Israel

2:30 pm “WHO” ARE WE? LEARNING FROM THE LIVED EXPERIENCE Katarina Stanisic, RN, BN Toronto Rehabilitation Institute WHO, World Alliance for Patient Safety

3:00pm QUALITY / PATIENT SAFETY ACHIEVEMENT AWARD AND PRESENTATION

3:15 pm FAMILIES AS PARTNERS IN PATIENT SAFETY AWARD AND PRESENTATION

3:30 pm WRAP-UP AND CONCLUDING REMARKS

Speaker Biographies:

Robert Buckman, MB, PhD, FRCPC Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto Oncologist, Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto Book author, “How to Break Bad News”

Lorelei Lingard, PhD Associate Professor & Scientist, University of Toronto SickKids Learning Institute, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto

Gord Martineau Anchor, "CityNews at Six", CityTV 2007 Gemini Award, Best News Anchor; 2007 Radio and Television News Directors' Lifetime Achievement Award

Anne Matlow, MD, FRCPC Director, Infection Prevention and Control Medical Director, Patient Safety The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto

Katarina Stanisic, RN, BN Patient Safety Officer Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, Toronto World Health Organization, World Alliance for Patient Safety, Patient Safety Champion

Elaine Tal-El, MA Chief Executive, Auditory-Verbal Israel, Jerusalem, Israel Parent

Karima Velji, RN, PhD Vice President, Patient Care and Chief Nursing Executive Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, Toronto

Download or View 2008 Sickkids Hospital Patient Safety Symposium Brochure (PDF, 107KB)

The Parents as Partners in Safety Committee

Read about The Parents as Partners in Safety Committee at Sickkids Hospital as a model for partnership between parents and staff and an essential underpinning of patient and family centred care.

Educational Documentaries on family centred care and interprofessional practise

The educational video effort organized by the IPP team is now in day 16 of filming and I was invited to talk about family centred care. For a few hours the director's focus changed from hand held camera to a fixed setup in the Atrium boardroom. I entered the room to find it taken over by crew and gear and was ushered to the makeup chair where Ava turned by ruddy complexion skin shade and I practiced some talking points with Marc. It was my first full make up and professional filming and I found the preparation fascinating in its adjustment of light tones, hairs and incredible concern about skin shine. I had only seen husband and wife director team Marc and Marcy Stone at the IPP retreat where they were continually lobbed pointed questions about the challenge of separating IPP and FCC into two movies so it was good to see them in their element, relaxed, focused and professional. It's a tall order to answer questions and present heart felt bullet points about family centred care in 20 minutes but I was very happy for the opportunity (though tight time slots are great practice for focusing on essentials). Unsure if anything I said was crisp enough to make two 30 minute videos I was relieved to hear that social worker David Nicholas has arranged for all footage to be used for further research.

2008 Sasha Bella Walk for Sickkids Family Centred Care

It is exactly two months to the 2008 Sasha Bella Walk and we are getting excited! In the next few days Pamela will email out the link to the Sickkids Foundation registration, donation and sponsorship web tools and post them here. I am ecstatic that Sickkids has been rolling out the powerful fundraising tools from Artez which allows you to create your own page with picture and target thermometer and get friends to sponsor you. The ease with which a network can be mobilized online now is just breathtaking. In the mists of the long winter that just passed, Pamela got to work with friends since highschool Alison Goldman and Evette Goldhar and two sisters, Raina Stein and sister in law Lisa Singer and imagined a carnival for kids and the kids in all of us in beautiful Cedarvale Ravine. As we anticipate the energy of hundreds of people raising funds and awareness about Family Centred Care at Sickkids Hospital, enjoy some pictures of the first low key walk with its drum circle holding back the rain. How special it was to see Pamela strolling Mia with neighbours, family, nurses and friends.