Health 8-08_9-08
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…catch [doctors] trying to draw a map of a child’s mind, which…keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it…probably roads in the island, for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of color here and there, and coral reefs…and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs…and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. —J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan
American Family Children’s Hospital Plays Nice
American Family Children’s Hospital American Family Insurance, a Madison-headquartered company, made an initial $10 million donation to the hospital and has contributed $15 million to date.
By TAM NGUYEN AND AL JOSEF
Play can be the most
integral part in a child’s healing process, and from the moment you step inside the doors of the American Family Children’s Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin, you begin to feel much better. The state-of-the-art, world-class hospital replaced the former UW Children’s
44 | ccn august/september 08
Hospital last August and is by no means your average children’s hospital. Once housed on the fourth floor of the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, the children’s hospital is now a 225,000-square foot, full-service child healthcare facility.
health
All photos courtesy of American Family Children’s Hospital
First floor The first floor of the hospital is a charming mix of old and new Wisconsin with a movie theater (left) and a train depot.
Though the magnitude of the hospital may be slightly intimidating for a child, the ambience is a friendly and playful flirt with the imagination. The visual theme of “All Things Wisconsin” choo-choos its way through five floors of the hospital’s interior, giving a country to big city vibe. The ground floor and main lobby with its etched farm glass panels, tractor tire track print floors, train depot, and gift shop resembling an old-time community drugstore, evoke the small community feel of a town square. Across from the hospital’s main entrance, a vibrant marquee flashes neon lights over the Pierce Family Theater where patients and families can enjoy a film or DVD during their visit. The main lobby, just outside the theater, is designed with UW’s Memorial Union Terrace in mind. Families can relax on the patio tables and chairs while their child marvels at the faux sugar maple tree that looms over park benches in earthy autumnal-colored foliage. Around the main lobby is the Lake Michigan beach area with a water- and sandcolored floor that harbors a replica of the 74-year-old Fond du Lac Lighthouse that also acts as a playroom. Each floor of the hospital is decorated in a different motif to reflect different areas of Wisconsin, such as farms, prairies, and woods. The architecture of the hospital is designed to not only aid in a child’s healing, but to also engage parents in the healthcare of their child. The rooms have doubled in size from the previous children’s hospital and now include a pullout couch, parental workspace with a small desk, two sinks per room, and cabinets to hide oxygen and monitoring hookups when not in use—tools that would normally intimidate a child. The hospital also has café room service, a laundry room
equipped with two washers and dryers, a lactation room, and a family-style kitchen. While the American Family Children’s Hospital is more than prepared to take care of any child’s medical needs, they also realize that the children and their families have needs that go beyond the physical ailments. “The child isn’t the disease,” said Mary Kaminski, director of patient and family services. “It just comes along with them.” She explained that having a child in a hospital can be a trying time for not just the child but the entire family. “It is a very abnormal time for the family and what we try to do at the hospital is give them a sense of normalcy,” she said. The hospital offers a number of programs and amenities designed to allow both the children and their families to carry on their normal everyday activities while the child is treated at the hospital. And for a child, one important component of everyday life is play, and the hospital’s Child Life program is designed with that in mind.
Child Life Program
The Child Life program uses play as an important tool to aid in both the psychosocial and emotional care of a child. The program is staffed and run by certified child life specialists who can tailor activities to suit a particular child or age group. Three playrooms—one in the diagnostic therapy center and others on the fourth and fifth floors—allow patients and their families to play games, read books, or just have a space to be together. The playrooms are available for use 24/7 with adult supervision. An old idea in the medical community used to be that children in hospitals were there to get well and not there
“When children play, they go to a place of discovery, exploration, or to simply have fun. They forget about where they are and their illness.” —Mary Kaminski, director of patient and family services, American Family Children’s Hospital
to play. Kaminski argued that play, in any form, can be an integral component of children’s recovery because it allows them to connect to the world outside the hospital. “When children play, they go to a place of discovery, exploration, or to simply have fun,” said Kaminski. “They forget about where they are and their illness.”
ccn august/september 08
| 45
Looking good The Positive Image Center helps children heal by helping them look and feel like themselves.
hospital school, their children wouldn’t have graduated on time with the rest of their classmates,” Kaminski said.
Positive Image Center and Flashes of Hope
Cafe The cafe is a great place to pick up a healthy and nutritious snack.
Drawing a picture, using distraction techniques, and/or playing a board game with a staff member does wonders for morale and can provide a much-needed connection to another human being. “Playing a game is just the activity,” said Kaminski. “The real payoff is the intimacy that develops between the child life specialist and the patients, which attempts to maximize their ability to cope while providing them a bridge to something normal.”
Hospital School
Illness and injury can often have a profound impact on a child’s appearance and self-esteem. Scarring, weight changes, and hair loss can cause children to become withdrawn and depressed because they look different and they are afraid of how others may view them. The Positive Image Center helps them maintain a healthy positive self-image by helping them look and feel like themselves again. The Positive Image Center is essentially a mini-salon that is open to all hospital patients three years old and up. Patients can relax and enjoy themselves while they get their hair styled and their makeup done. A collection of wigs, caps, and scarves are available to help cover up baldness due to chemotherapy or neurosurgery, and an on-staff cosmetologist can teach them how to apply makeup to mask scars or lessen the impact of other appearance-altering treatments. Kaminski explained that even if children don’t need any of those things, the simple act of caring for them is enough to improve their mood and outlook. She spoke of a child with cerebral palsy who came in to have her hair washed. “Sometimes children with cerebral palsy have a hard time relaxing,” said Kaminski. “But as soon as the warm water hit her hair, you could see her body instantly relax. The transformation was quite remarkable.” Children can also celebrate their lives by taking a family photo. Flashes of Hope is a nationwide program that offers free professional portrait services for families of children fighting cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Once a month, a team of volunteer photographers and stylists take over a clinic’s waiting room and turn it into a full-service photo studio com-
Another important aspect of children’s normal life is their schooling. And while at the hospital, the hospital school helps ensure that the children don’t fall behind in their lessons. The school is open to all ages of students from kindergarten through high school and is staffed by three certified teachers from the Madison Metropolitan School District. Each teacher specializes in a particular age group and can provide instruction in a wide variety of subjects. Instead of holding traditional classes, the teachers work closely with the child’s regular teacher to tailor a lesson plan specifically suited to the child’s needs. Normally, this involves helping the chil- Education Hospital School keeps the dren with their homework, which their school sends The kids on track with their studies. to them, or following a lesson plan that their regular teacher provides. “Our teachers can provide the kind of one-on-one attention that they wouldn’t normally be able to get in a regular school because of their illness,” said Kaminski. Their efforts have not only helped students keep up with their classes, but have allowed them to make a seamless transition back into regular school when their treatment is over. “Parents have said that without the
46 | ccn august/september 08
health
plete with mini-makeovers and wardrobe. These black-andwhite portraits taken by award-winning photographers help the children feel better about their changing appearance by celebrating it. The Positive Image Center is the only one of its kind in the country because it caters exclusively to children and has been well received by many others in the hospital industry. “Many of the hospital executives that have toured the hospital love the center and have left saying that they would like one of their own in their hospital,” said Kaminski.
Family Resource Center
When the new American Family Children’s Hospital was built in 2007, the Family Resource Center was included to give parents a space to learn more about their child’s illness and treatment while maintaining their normal routine. The center combines an educational and business center complete with four computer workstations, a fax machine, copier, printer, and free wireless Internet access. The center’s library features an extensive resource collection with materials ranging from medical journals and textbooks to books about how to cope with the unique emotional challenges of having a child in the hospital. The workstation computers also come pre-linked to a number of general and disease-specific Web sites. A medical librarian is on staff to help direct parents to the specific materials they may need or answer questions that they may have. “Learning about their child’s disease and its treatment is comforting to parents because it allows them to become more active participants in their child’s treatment,” said Kaminski. Gaining this information allows them to speak with the doctors on more equal footing, and sometimes that dialogue can lead to different treatment options that may have not been considered before. The Family Resource Center also houses the Kohl’s Safety Center, which offers child-safety equipment for the home and car and sporting activities like biking and skiing. All the equipment is sold at cost, and parents also receive training in how to use the equipment correctly. Jim Savage, manager of the center, said, “Education about child safety is just as important as the products that we offer.”
Tyler’s Place The famous Fond du Lac Lighthouse stands outside of Tyler’s Place. A play space is dedicated to the patients’ brothers and sisters (left).
said Kaminski. “Parents think that their children are handling it very well, but when you ask the children they say that they are struggling to cope, especially during routines where the parent is an integral part of the activity.” To help bridge this mental and emotional gap, the hospital has Tyler’s Place, a special program dedicated to the welfare of the siblings.
“Learning about their child’s disease and its treatment is comforting to parents because it allows them to become more active participants in their child’s treatment.” —Mary Kaminski
Tyler’s Place is located on the first floor of the hospital and features a replica of the famous Fond du Lac Lighthouse on one side. Much like the other playrooms, it is filled with games and activities that the patients’ brothers and sisters can take part in when they cannot stay with their siblings. Tyler’s Place is also the home of Club Sib, a child support group for the siblings of the sick child. It is run by a sibling coordinator and a therapist who play with the children and encourage them to talk about their feelings and the particular difficulties they may have because of their brother’s or sister’s hospitalization. The American Family Children’s Hospital is designed to enhance the quality of life for children and their families who are Tyler’s Place When a child is hospitalized, the parents’ attention may natu- in the healing process. In a child’s imagination, playfulness rally be focused on the child, leaving his or her siblings feeling and its overwhelming gift to bridge make-believe worlds with lonely or abandoned. “It’s surprising to see the kind of disconnect reality is what connects them to the world. This place is where with some parents’ conception of how their other children are children go to be themselves. ¶ handling the illness versus what the children are actually feeling,”
ccn august/september 08
| 47
American Family Children’s Hospital Plays Nice
American Family Children’s Hospital American Family Insurance, a Madison-headquartered company, made an initial $10 million donation to the hospital and has contributed $15 million to date.
By TAM NGUYEN AND AL JOSEF
Play can be the most
integral part in a child’s healing process, and from the moment you step inside the doors of the American Family Children’s Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin, you begin to feel much better. The state-of-the-art, world-class hospital replaced the former UW Children’s
44 | ccn august/september 08
Hospital last August and is by no means your average children’s hospital. Once housed on the fourth floor of the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, the children’s hospital is now a 225,000-square foot, full-service child healthcare facility.
health
All photos courtesy of American Family Children’s Hospital
First floor The first floor of the hospital is a charming mix of old and new Wisconsin with a movie theater (left) and a train depot.
Though the magnitude of the hospital may be slightly intimidating for a child, the ambience is a friendly and playful flirt with the imagination. The visual theme of “All Things Wisconsin” choo-choos its way through five floors of the hospital’s interior, giving a country to big city vibe. The ground floor and main lobby with its etched farm glass panels, tractor tire track print floors, train depot, and gift shop resembling an old-time community drugstore, evoke the small community feel of a town square. Across from the hospital’s main entrance, a vibrant marquee flashes neon lights over the Pierce Family Theater where patients and families can enjoy a film or DVD during their visit. The main lobby, just outside the theater, is designed with UW’s Memorial Union Terrace in mind. Families can relax on the patio tables and chairs while their child marvels at the faux sugar maple tree that looms over park benches in earthy autumnal-colored foliage. Around the main lobby is the Lake Michigan beach area with a water- and sandcolored floor that harbors a replica of the 74-year-old Fond du Lac Lighthouse that also acts as a playroom. Each floor of the hospital is decorated in a different motif to reflect different areas of Wisconsin, such as farms, prairies, and woods. The architecture of the hospital is designed to not only aid in a child’s healing, but to also engage parents in the healthcare of their child. The rooms have doubled in size from the previous children’s hospital and now include a pullout couch, parental workspace with a small desk, two sinks per room, and cabinets to hide oxygen and monitoring hookups when not in use—tools that would normally intimidate a child. The hospital also has café room service, a laundry room
equipped with two washers and dryers, a lactation room, and a family-style kitchen. While the American Family Children’s Hospital is more than prepared to take care of any child’s medical needs, they also realize that the children and their families have needs that go beyond the physical ailments. “The child isn’t the disease,” said Mary Kaminski, director of patient and family services. “It just comes along with them.” She explained that having a child in a hospital can be a trying time for not just the child but the entire family. “It is a very abnormal time for the family and what we try to do at the hospital is give them a sense of normalcy,” she said. The hospital offers a number of programs and amenities designed to allow both the children and their families to carry on their normal everyday activities while the child is treated at the hospital. And for a child, one important component of everyday life is play, and the hospital’s Child Life program is designed with that in mind.
Child Life Program
The Child Life program uses play as an important tool to aid in both the psychosocial and emotional care of a child. The program is staffed and run by certified child life specialists who can tailor activities to suit a particular child or age group. Three playrooms—one in the diagnostic therapy center and others on the fourth and fifth floors—allow patients and their families to play games, read books, or just have a space to be together. The playrooms are available for use 24/7 with adult supervision. An old idea in the medical community used to be that children in hospitals were there to get well and not there
“When children play, they go to a place of discovery, exploration, or to simply have fun. They forget about where they are and their illness.” —Mary Kaminski, director of patient and family services, American Family Children’s Hospital
to play. Kaminski argued that play, in any form, can be an integral component of children’s recovery because it allows them to connect to the world outside the hospital. “When children play, they go to a place of discovery, exploration, or to simply have fun,” said Kaminski. “They forget about where they are and their illness.”
ccn august/september 08
| 45
Looking good The Positive Image Center helps children heal by helping them look and feel like themselves.
hospital school, their children wouldn’t have graduated on time with the rest of their classmates,” Kaminski said.
Positive Image Center and Flashes of Hope
Cafe The cafe is a great place to pick up a healthy and nutritious snack.
Drawing a picture, using distraction techniques, and/or playing a board game with a staff member does wonders for morale and can provide a much-needed connection to another human being. “Playing a game is just the activity,” said Kaminski. “The real payoff is the intimacy that develops between the child life specialist and the patients, which attempts to maximize their ability to cope while providing them a bridge to something normal.”
Hospital School
Illness and injury can often have a profound impact on a child’s appearance and self-esteem. Scarring, weight changes, and hair loss can cause children to become withdrawn and depressed because they look different and they are afraid of how others may view them. The Positive Image Center helps them maintain a healthy positive self-image by helping them look and feel like themselves again. The Positive Image Center is essentially a mini-salon that is open to all hospital patients three years old and up. Patients can relax and enjoy themselves while they get their hair styled and their makeup done. A collection of wigs, caps, and scarves are available to help cover up baldness due to chemotherapy or neurosurgery, and an on-staff cosmetologist can teach them how to apply makeup to mask scars or lessen the impact of other appearance-altering treatments. Kaminski explained that even if children don’t need any of those things, the simple act of caring for them is enough to improve their mood and outlook. She spoke of a child with cerebral palsy who came in to have her hair washed. “Sometimes children with cerebral palsy have a hard time relaxing,” said Kaminski. “But as soon as the warm water hit her hair, you could see her body instantly relax. The transformation was quite remarkable.” Children can also celebrate their lives by taking a family photo. Flashes of Hope is a nationwide program that offers free professional portrait services for families of children fighting cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Once a month, a team of volunteer photographers and stylists take over a clinic’s waiting room and turn it into a full-service photo studio com-
Another important aspect of children’s normal life is their schooling. And while at the hospital, the hospital school helps ensure that the children don’t fall behind in their lessons. The school is open to all ages of students from kindergarten through high school and is staffed by three certified teachers from the Madison Metropolitan School District. Each teacher specializes in a particular age group and can provide instruction in a wide variety of subjects. Instead of holding traditional classes, the teachers work closely with the child’s regular teacher to tailor a lesson plan specifically suited to the child’s needs. Normally, this involves helping the chil- Education Hospital School keeps the dren with their homework, which their school sends The kids on track with their studies. to them, or following a lesson plan that their regular teacher provides. “Our teachers can provide the kind of one-on-one attention that they wouldn’t normally be able to get in a regular school because of their illness,” said Kaminski. Their efforts have not only helped students keep up with their classes, but have allowed them to make a seamless transition back into regular school when their treatment is over. “Parents have said that without the
46 | ccn august/september 08
health
plete with mini-makeovers and wardrobe. These black-andwhite portraits taken by award-winning photographers help the children feel better about their changing appearance by celebrating it. The Positive Image Center is the only one of its kind in the country because it caters exclusively to children and has been well received by many others in the hospital industry. “Many of the hospital executives that have toured the hospital love the center and have left saying that they would like one of their own in their hospital,” said Kaminski.
Family Resource Center
When the new American Family Children’s Hospital was built in 2007, the Family Resource Center was included to give parents a space to learn more about their child’s illness and treatment while maintaining their normal routine. The center combines an educational and business center complete with four computer workstations, a fax machine, copier, printer, and free wireless Internet access. The center’s library features an extensive resource collection with materials ranging from medical journals and textbooks to books about how to cope with the unique emotional challenges of having a child in the hospital. The workstation computers also come pre-linked to a number of general and disease-specific Web sites. A medical librarian is on staff to help direct parents to the specific materials they may need or answer questions that they may have. “Learning about their child’s disease and its treatment is comforting to parents because it allows them to become more active participants in their child’s treatment,” said Kaminski. Gaining this information allows them to speak with the doctors on more equal footing, and sometimes that dialogue can lead to different treatment options that may have not been considered before. The Family Resource Center also houses the Kohl’s Safety Center, which offers child-safety equipment for the home and car and sporting activities like biking and skiing. All the equipment is sold at cost, and parents also receive training in how to use the equipment correctly. Jim Savage, manager of the center, said, “Education about child safety is just as important as the products that we offer.”
Tyler’s Place The famous Fond du Lac Lighthouse stands outside of Tyler’s Place. A play space is dedicated to the patients’ brothers and sisters (left).
said Kaminski. “Parents think that their children are handling it very well, but when you ask the children they say that they are struggling to cope, especially during routines where the parent is an integral part of the activity.” To help bridge this mental and emotional gap, the hospital has Tyler’s Place, a special program dedicated to the welfare of the siblings.
“Learning about their child’s disease and its treatment is comforting to parents because it allows them to become more active participants in their child’s treatment.” —Mary Kaminski
Tyler’s Place is located on the first floor of the hospital and features a replica of the famous Fond du Lac Lighthouse on one side. Much like the other playrooms, it is filled with games and activities that the patients’ brothers and sisters can take part in when they cannot stay with their siblings. Tyler’s Place is also the home of Club Sib, a child support group for the siblings of the sick child. It is run by a sibling coordinator and a therapist who play with the children and encourage them to talk about their feelings and the particular difficulties they may have because of their brother’s or sister’s hospitalization. The American Family Children’s Hospital is designed to enhance the quality of life for children and their families who are Tyler’s Place When a child is hospitalized, the parents’ attention may natu- in the healing process. In a child’s imagination, playfulness rally be focused on the child, leaving his or her siblings feeling and its overwhelming gift to bridge make-believe worlds with lonely or abandoned. “It’s surprising to see the kind of disconnect reality is what connects them to the world. This place is where with some parents’ conception of how their other children are children go to be themselves. ¶ handling the illness versus what the children are actually feeling,”
ccn august/september 08
| 47
