NewsDetail
Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) Al Maha Children’s Unit at Rumailah Hospital has established a successful program designed to help long-term ventilated children live at home reintegrate into family and community life. The special program has ensured that these children, many of whom have been hospitalized for years, experience a marked improvement in their quality of life.
“The Al Maha Children’s Unit was established in 2010 to care for children with chronic illnesses requiring long-term ventilation; however, we realized early on that providing only good clinical care was not enough. These children deserved a more holistic approach to care that would see them have a better quality of life,” said Dr. Abdul Aziz Darwish, Medical Director of Rumailah Hospital. “What ensued was a very specialized program to safely wean some patients off their mechanical ventilators. Some patients were even able to be discharged safely so they can live at home with their families.”
The highly specialized pediatric unit, Al Maha 1, is geared toward the treatment of children with chronic illnesses requiring long-term ventilated care. These children, aged between three months to 14 years, have multiple system disorders, requiring a mechanical ventilator to help them breathe. The disorders can stem from congenital conditions (meaning they were born with the condition) to those acquired later in life, possibly due to an infection that caused respiratory disorders.
Dr. Reem Babiker Abdalla Mohamed, General Pediatrics Consultant at Al Maha 1, explained how important it was for all professional team members to meticulously check each stage of the process for every child who is a candidate for discharge to ensure their safety is always at the forefront of care provision. “Within the multi-disciplinary teams, comprising specialist doctors and nurses, we first reviewed all the available options to determine the right care plan for the children who were assessed as being viable candidates for this project.”
“We then had to engage with the parents to ensure they fully understood what we were aiming to do; it was essential to get them to consent to the new approach and believe that this would deliver real benefits to the lives of their children. Depending on the age and cognitive ability of the child, we would explain the changes in treatment to the child. We strongly believe that good communication underpins the success of such projects,” added Dr. Mohamed.
This project was developed to enhance coordination of care by engaging the family in the care of the patient and thereby providing improvements in the patients' quality of life by helping them integrate into their community. This successful project has seen over 10 caregivers trained on how to care for children with tracheostomies, which has resulted in three patents being safely discharged and returning home. In addition, another four patients were weaned off of mechanical ventilators.
