If hope is the thing with feathers, as Emily Dickenson
so famously wrote, then hope is floating all around
the extraordinary programs of Georgetown Pediatrics.
From the Kids Mobile Medical Clinic, which goes out
into Washington's under-served communities,
to give children a chance for comprehensive medical
care, to the Hoya Clinic at D.C.
General
serving homeless families, to Jump Start,
the innovative after-school program, to the cutting
edge therapies of treatments being done every day in
ever department at the hospital.
Georgetown Pediatrics is changing the face of
healthcare for our children.
Georgetown Pediatrics is a very special place.
I think we represent total caring compassionate care
to all children in the area.
At Georgetown, its mission has always been to provide
the best top quality care to anyone who needs it.
So our Kids Mobile Medical Clinic program provides
comprehensive care in the form of a medical home.
It's a place where people can go and get all of their
care needs met.
Within these walls, families find a community of warmth,
care and compassion along with a dedicated medical
team.
We really try to not only just treat the acute
illnesses and the social ill issues, and the main
health issues, but we try to create relationships
with our families.
I say all the time that they bought into the concept
of, um, more than just healthy child, but healthy
families, healthy children.
For Carole Pratt and her three children, adopted
from the NBC4 series, Wednesday's Child, the
Mobile Clinic has been a god-send.
Dr. Levy is incredible.
Incredible.
My children love him, I love him.
I love the fact that their start in life was a little
different.
But when they come here and they meet people that
actually care, and people that actually are willing
to sit and take their time.
I often wonder how he has that kind of time, because
he does have other patients but
you wouldn't know it.
The kind of care that we provide, it's very
comprehensive and it requires time and time
is something that these families often don't get.
And so by us providing, by us being with them and
spending time with them and getting to know them,
we can, we're better situated to be able to
address as many of their needs as we can to get
them on a path, to help them get on a path of
healthier living, and hopefully that will help
the children grow socially, emotionally, cognitively
into mature self-sufficient, healthy and happy adults.
You're going to be a lawyer, and then you're going to
go on to be an astronaut, and then you're going go
on to be something else.
Yep.
Outstanding.
I mean it means a lot to all of us because, I mean,
with the support that they
give, I mean, it's almost like they're your doctors,
but they're also your family.
Like they make that communication with you
and they have that attachment to you that
not a regular doctor would have.
We really try to surround the child with almost like
a blanket of care.
They've helped both of us live a healthier life.
Georgetown Pediatrics sees children from newborn to
age 21.
As part of the mission that caring for all children
regardless of ability to pay, the Hoya Clinic was
established to serve the needs of homeless families.
During the day, children are seen by top medical
specialists.
Evening brings special care for adults by a team
of medical school residents providing comprehensive
care for the entire family.
The idea behind the Hoya Clinic is two-fold.
It's one is to provide top quality care to families
in need at the Emergency Family Shelter and the
other is to expose our young health professionals
to the complex needs and problems that families
in need face in trying to reach good quality care
so that when they go out in their careers, they
have an awareness of the disparities that people
face and maybe they'll help to do something about
it.
With that awareness of disparities within our
society, Georgetown Pediatrics Center for Child
and Human Development recognize that some of
our cities children face significant challenges
in their readiness for reading and preparation
for school.
Jump Start, an afterschool literacy program was
established to help these children right from the
start.
Some studies in Early Childhood Education Program
that pairs up college students to work one-to-one
with low income preschoolers, this is an
early literacy program and it encompassing the
well-being of the entire child.
There's lots of different facets to that and education
being one of them.
And Jump Start is also working towards the day
that every child in America enters school prepared
to succeed.
Georgetown Pediatrics also recognized another need
in the community, that of creating a system of
medical care for deaf children and their families.
Most of the families I see are culturally deaf
and use sign language and we make it culturally and
language accessible for them.
But we also see children who have hearing loss for
wide variety of reasons and their families as well.
Providing a full complement of services from a
pediatrician fluent in American Sign Language
to an interpreter who helps families with all
administrative issues and questions, and a nursing
and reception staff ready to help.
This is the only program of its kind in the
Washington area.
I think if you can empower a family to be fully in
charge of communicating about their child, who
they obviously care very much about, that's going
to really give them a sense of empowerment and the
sense of owning that knowledge, um, I can make
decisions for my child, I don't feel like I need
to leave it to somebody else.
I think this clinic more than anything provides
them an opportunity to have a personal relationship
with a physician.
They don't need to, I have an interpreter available
for the things other than my visit, but when they
come to me, they communicate directly with me, I'm
familiar with the culture, I know the language and
they have direct access to a physician and they
have the same close relationship with that doctor
as another family would who's hearing.
Georgetown Pediatrics is best known, of course,
for its cutting edge therapies and treatments
and the innovative state of the art medical and
surgical programs within this hospital for children.
We're big enough and have the expertise and technical
abilities to take care of the sickest children,
from children who need transplants, to children
with severe cancer, to children with severe
respiratory illnesses.
And yet at the same time, we're small enough that
everybody knows everybody else.
I fell in love with the philosophy of this program.
Don't just treat the disease, treat the whole
person.
Treat the patient.
Treat the patient's family,
which means we treat the mind, power and soul of
the patient.
Because when a child walks into our clinic here, or
walks into our program, irrespective of whether
he has a chronic blood disorder or whether he
has cancer, we just embrace them.
We embrace the children from the minute they walk
in.
For Laurie Jones and her daughter MacKenzie, this
philosophy saved them.
When MacKenzie, my daughter was 5 months old, she was
having some odds symptoms that brought us to the
emergency room in the middle of the night and it turned
out that she had a stroke.
In the midst of several months of treatments, again
MacKenzie was rushed to the hospital with another
series of unusual symptoms.
It's a rough day when it's Friday afternoon and 10
doctors walk into your room to tell you the news
that they found basically a lesion on your child's
brain.
We had no idea, here she had just, her body had
just gone through a traumatic stroke, and then
to turn around and have this brain stem lesion,
we didn't know if she would ever walk or talk.
I mean, we were always hopeful through prayer
that was always going to survive, but we didn't
know what her life would be like, what her quality
of life would be like.
And, um, the doctor's here have just been with us
through every step, every department, ever division,
um, the best of the best.
They've guided us through this process and she is
doing great now.
Dr. Aziza Shad was one of the attending physicians
who cared for MacKenzie.
I think it took the whole team of pediatrics at
Georgetown to really concentrate on her and
make sure that she is what she is today.
Georgetown has saved her life, not only saved her
life, but brought her a fabulous quality of life.
For the many children treated for chronic disease,
ongoing research and clinical trials have yielded
life-changing results.
He has now doubled his weight, can you believe
that?
He has exactly doubled and grown 14, we figured
out 14.5
inches in just 4-1/2 years.
For chronic disorders of
the liver, pancreas and gastrointestinal tract,
a new arsenal of biological therapies and treatments
have transformed the trajectory of disease.
With such agents we can actually turn the pathways
off, almost like a switch and stop the disease or
the manifestations of the disease in its tracks.
You couldn't tell you have this disease Mark.
You're a picture of health.
While such therapies have given many children an
opportunity to lead a normal life, there are some young
patients who face life threatening organ failure.
Recognizing clear need, Georgetown has established,
under the leadership of Dr. Thomas Fishbein, a
transplant center that has given new hope to these
families.
For little Cyrus Boggs, Georgetown Pediatrics
rewrote the story of his life.
He received a four organ transplant, essentially
the entire digestive system.
He is definitely a miracle child.
They came to Georgetown after other hospitals had
given up.
Unwilling to let their child die, they fought
for one more chance.
Because of Georgetown, and because of their
resources and they have never given up on Cyrus,
and um, that's a big thing.
They have never, even when they have not known what
to do, they've never given up on Cyrus.
Georgetown definitely saved my child's life, not only
my son, but my whole family.
I have two daughters, and he is a huge part of our
family and without him it wouldn't be complete.
They've really saved our family, not just Cyrus.
Remember how sick you were?
Now you're so good.
You're such a miracle baby, do you know that?
Yeah?
I think what's unique about
us is the fact that we provide on the one hand,
cutting edge medical care for the children, at the
same time we're able to maintain a compassionate
environment, we're able to maintain this special
touch and special connection between the physicians
and the medical staff and the patient's and their
families, and I've been also practicing patient's
end of care.
A critical component of care is to create an
environment where fear is not first.
So at Georgetown, irrespective of what
department you come to in Pediatrics, whether
it is oncology, or cardiology, or its surgery
or it's the ICU, the focus is on the patient.
And what we really try and do is make it as
pleasant an experience as possible, try to take
away the fright and the fears of the family and
make sure that when the child leaves the hospital,
they feel that they've been well cared for and
that they've been loved during that period of time
they've been with us.
Recognizing that keeping a child pain-free would
also free them from the trauma of a hospital
experience, Georgetown instituted one of the first
programs in the country that created pain-free
diagnostic testing and treatments.
Child Life Specialists make it their mission to
keep a child centered on the joys of living, not
on the illness that keeps them there.
It is a unique team approach.
Georgetown Pediatrics is a world of caring
individuals working together to change lives.
One of our greatest challenges I think is that
Georgetown Pediatrics is Washington's best kept
secret and that should change.
Everyday these programs bring new hope that another
child's life takes a turn towards health and
happiness.
Georgetown Pediatrics, they care about all their
customers one at a time.
Georgetown Pediatrics, making a difference one
child at a time.