Thankful for Children’s Hospital ER
Nov. 21, 2016 will be etched forever in our collective memory. The crash that day of a Hamilton County school bus presented an unprecedented challenge for the Emergency Room at Children’s Hospital at Erlanger. As it is every day, the ER was prepared for this extreme, mass-casualty challenge.
The bus carried 37 kindergarten and elementary students who were on their home from a typical day at Woodmore Elementary School. Four children died in the crash; two children died at the hospital. Of the children who were transported to the ER, 19 were examined, treated and discharged within two hours. Six were admitted to the 18-bed Pediatric Intensive Care Unit; six were admitted to a regular pediatric unit. Three children remained in hospital as of Dec. 7.
I visited the hospital on Dec. 7 to learn more. The ER in its regular operational mode is a very busy place.
Children’s Hospital provides the only ER, trauma center and facility dedicated exclusively to the care and treatment of sick and injured children in the region. The majority of patients come from Hamilton County and 16 nearby counties in Tennessee and Georgia. Patients may arrive by private vehicle, ambulance or one of five Life Force helicopters positioned in Blue Ridge and Calhoun, Ga., and Sparta, Cleveland and Winchester, Tenn. Additional patients arrive come to the ER from Northeastern Alabama and the western tip of North Carolina. No child is ever turned away. In 2015, 42,000 children received treatment in the ER. Included in the number were every conceivable injury, potentially life-threatening infections such as meningitis and victims of physical and sexual abuse. Children with extensive burns are stabilized before transfer to a specialized burn center in Augusta, Ga.
There are 33 beds in the ER. Eight beds are specialized for procedures such as suturing and other minor surgeries. Four are designed for acute trauma. An additional four beds are reserved for patients who may need an extended stay for observation.
Because of the intensity of even a typical day’s activity, ER staff work eight-hour shifts. Each staff member is trained to provide expert care to sick and injured children. Two Child Life Specialists are assigned to the ER to address the psychological and social needs of children and their families.
Children’s Hospital participates in a collaborative network of more than 90 American hospitals specialized for the care of children. Members of the coalition regularly share information on best practices, including emergency care. A large, multi-autographed banner bearing best wishes from a sister hospital, Olympia Medical Center in Port Angeles, Wash., was sent to Children’s Hospital after the Woodmore tragedy.
Children’s Hospital opened as a distinct entity on July 1, 1929. Heated debate on the need for a separate facility for children preceded the building of the new facility on the side of Missionary Ridge. Funding was barely adequate to keep the doors open in the hospital’s early years. Infectious diseases, including polio, typhoid and whooping cough, dominated admissions in the hospital’s early years until the era of vaccines and antibiotics reduced the epidemic impact of many of these illnesses.
In 1975, Children’s Hospital rejoined the main Erlanger campus with the opening of the present facility, now in its 40th year of operation.
A brief overview of emergency services at Children’s Hospital cannot capture the energy, attentiveness and compassion that radiate from every unit that I visited.