[MUSIC]
I would describe the PCICU as a really welcoming and warm place.
>From the nurses and the techs to the doctors and the surgeons,
they're very kind, very welcoming.
They know what they're doing.
You can feel very safe there with your child.
[MUSIC]
>> If you were to walk into our unit, you would walk into a team of loving nurses.
[MUSIC]
I understand this is a very overwhelming situation because some parents have never
been in an ICU ever.
So anything that I can do to put a smile on someone's face, I will do it.
[MUSIC]
>> We have an exceptional group of people
who provide fantastic care of children in the ICU.
I've never seen a better team of people with a common cause, and
that's to heal the children that are in the unit.
[MUSIC]
>> PCICU stands for Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, and
its focus is taking care of critically ill children with typically congenital
heart disease, but something wrong with their heart.
>> So when you walk into the PCICU, you're gonna go down this great hallway and
you'll be greeted by the HUC, who handles the administrative things on the unit,
and there will be a waiting room off to your right.
And if you head on down to your left, once the HUC buzzes you in,
you'll go into the secure part of the unit.
>> The Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit is comprised of all single bedrooms.
The unit has 16 beds, so we can have up to 16 patients in the unit.
Each child and family member has their room where they stay.
We have glass doors across the front, but
parents have curtains they can pull closed when they need additional privacy.
Families are in the unit 24 hours hours a day 7 days a week.
A family member can sleep at the bedside with their child.
We encourage families to participate in care.
Things that they can do such as change diapers or read books or brush hair,
whatever they can do to help us care for their child we encourage them to do.
>> So there's a lot of beeping that happens,
there are a lot of monitors that go off.
There are a lot of alarms that parents are just like, my god,
I don't even know what this is.
And so what I do is I take the time to explain to them what each monitor
alarm means and I'll go through step-by-step.
>> You can see all these frightening tubes,
you can see all these numbers up there.
I don't want you to get focused on any number.
But, are we doing okay?
Are we getting better or are we not?
That's really the focus.
[MUSIC]
>> The nursing staff in the unit is comprised of staff nurses who
will take care of the children in the unit.
And those are the bedside nurses, so the direct caregivers.
We also have a charge nurse every shift,
who's monitoring all the operations in the unit during that shift.
We have a nurse manager who oversees the entire unit.
Nurse/patient ratios in the cardiac ICU are typically one to one or two to one.
So a nurse, who has one patient, is in that room nearly his or her entire shift.
The cardiac ICU actually has an extraordinary multi-disciplinary
team of people who are always in the unit.
So we have our cardiac intensivist,
who is the physician who is in charge of the unit.
We have nurse practitioners, we have cardiologists, we have our bedside nurses,
respiratory therapists, our social workers, and
then of course our child life staff who are fabulous at providing developmentally
appropriate activities for kids.
[MUSIC]
When we come to discuss their baby or their child on a daily basis,
it's called rounding.
And what rounds are is, in the morning, we get together as a group.
We go over everything that has occurred the previous night.
We identify all the goals of the previous day and have we achieved those goals.
And we identify the new goals for the next day.
>> So it's an opportunity for everyone to be on the same page at the same time,
crucially, including the parents.
So the importance for the parents is that they get to hear what we, the care team,
think about the patient.
But they also get to tell us what they think.
And we have to always remember that nobody knows this patient better than his or
her parent.
[MUSIC]
>> The most important thing you can do as a parent, as an advocate for
your child is to be as knowledgeable as possible, so ask questions.
>> You're a parent and your job is to protect your child.
All of a sudden now you're giving that protection of your child
to me and my team.
We know that that is the most scary thing you'll ever go through in your life.
Every decision we make must be a joint decision that we all agree with.
This is your most important asset and you need to protect that and
we need to protect that too.
[MUSIC]
>> We hope that when a child is transferred out of the unit that
the parents have felt that they were an active part of their child's care, and
they were an intricate part in helping their child heal and
get to the point where they can now transfer out.
>> And when we left the ICU, our son was doing amazingly well.
We miss the staff, we appreciate all of their hard work.
They remain interested in Jack's wellbeing, and
really invested in the time and the care that they spent giving him.
[MUSIC]