Going Home

Going Home

Elise Turner: Hi, I'm Elise Turner. I am a member of the Cardiac Center's Family Advisory Council.

Ashley Phillips, BSN, RN, CPN: Hi, I'm Ashley Phillips. I'm a clinical nurse expert in the Cardiac Step Down Unit at CHOP.

Elise Turner: So, you know, taking your newborn baby home from the hospital is, stressful, as it is, even if you have a healthy baby

So what's CHOP doing to better prepare families for discharge?

Ashley Phillips, BSN, RN, CPN: I think overall what CHOP is trying to do is make parents more included in the discharge process. So specifically in the cardiac step down unit, we talk about discharge pretty early on in the inpatient stay. Hearing the word discharge is scary, especially when you're like, wait, I'm gonna have to do all this stuff at home.

So, I'm trying to talk about it early and as often as possible. And as we get closer to that time, including parents in every single step so that they know exactly what to look out for. Sometimes parents catch things that we don't catch because we told them, you know, these are the steps to go home. So they can say like, hey, didn't we say we're going to do this?

And we're like, we did. So it just helps it to be more of like a collaborative approach to discharge. So parents can feel like they're involved and not feel like they're kind of being left out of the loop or just being told what to do. They can also have their input on what they think would work best for them at home as well.

So I think just trying to be more inclusive with our families, kind of reinforcing what they need and using different tools to help everyone stay on track. Make them feel like they're part of the care team because they are.

Elise Turner: So what are, what are some of the steps? Like what are some of the things that parents have to do before they go home?

Ashley Phillips, BSN, RN, CPN: So one, making sure they understand their child's cardiac defect, whatever it is, and then making sure they have the proper education. So we teach a lot of CPR, which is a hard class to teach because trying to imagine doing that on your child is really hard to do. So teaching them CPR and then whatever care that we're doing at the bedside, we teach them. So if they have an NG tube, they learn how to insert the NG tube. And that's another hard class, I teach in our, I teach in that in our education room in the Cardiac Center, and there are so many times our parents walk into the room and they just immediately start crying when they see all the supplies and the doll, so reassuring them that they'll be able to do this while also trying our best to give them all the skills that they need. So, it's a lot of education. There are a lot of different teams involved. So our team, our speech team, which is another, kind of big deal for families like feeding is another big deal.

So just making sure they get all the education that they need, making sure they have all the equipment that they need. Like pulse ox's, feeding supplies, making sure that their home environment is the best that it can be. So, you know, collaborating with our social work team, our case management team.

So there's so many teams involved. The steps that we take kind of depend on what the child needs, but it's a lot of education and a lot of reinforcement of the education.

Elise Turner: I heard you speak at your talk yesterday and you mentioned that you allow the parents to have 24 hours to have them do, from start to finish, one whole day of care under supervision and so they can ask questions.

That's that was, I thought that was really great.

Ashley Phillips, BSN, RN, CPN: Yeah. And it's another intimidating thing for families, but especially like the overnight piece when they have to remember to wake up to do certain things. But I think it helps to put a lot of stuff into perspective. It's like a trial run.

But like you said, they still have the support of nursing. So it's helpful to see where they think they would need help and how we can help them after that.

Elise Turner: That's great. Really great. What's one piece of advice that you can offer parents who are preparing to go home with their child?

Ashley Phillips, BSN, RN, CPN: I think just to believe in yourself, you know more than you think you do and you're more prepared than you think you are. And it's hard to get that routine when you're in the hospital. But once you go home, you'll get that routine. Your family will all fall in place. Like everything will come together.

Just believe that you're capable of taking care of your child. Yeah.

Elise Turner: Thank you so much for being here today.

Ashley Phillips, BSN, RN, CPN: Thank you for having me.