Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital is Canada’s largest children’s rehabilitation hospital focused on improving the lives of kids with disabilities. We help kids and youth with disabilities reach their fullest potential through quality clinical care and innovative therapies, applied research, and participation and inclusion programs.
We are a provincial resource for children with cerebral palsy, acquired brain injury including concussion, muscular dystrophy, amputation, epilepsy, spina bifida, arthritis, cleft-lip and palate, autism, and other physical and developmental disabilities.
We strive to continuously improve the quality, coordination, and delivery of care at both our hospital and health system levels. Below are some of the initiatives we are working on.
Leading the system: coordinated care for medically complex kids
One of our goals is to support innovative models of care in collaboration with our system partners to help children with disabilities and their families more easily and efficiently navigate the health care system. In addition to a number of programs and partnerships that help facilitate the often challenging transition for clients into adult care, we are also collaborating on a long-term initiative that helps provide a continuity of care for some of our most vulnerable, medically complex children.
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The Integrated Complex Care Model (ICCM) is an initiative of the Toronto Central Local Health Integration Network in collaboration with The Hospital for Sick Children, the Toronto Central Community Care Access Centre and Holland Bloorview. Through the initiative each client and family is partnered with key health care workers who are responsible for facilitating their care on an ongoing basis. These key health-care workers ensure transitions between the organizations are coordinated, information is shared, service duplication is reduced, and ultimately help improve the overall experience of care for clients and families.
Transforming care: focus on youth concussion
Last year Holland Bloorview launched one of the first concussion centres in the world dedicated exclusively to paediatric concussion. Children and youth require a unique approach to concussion care because their brains are still developing. The Concussion Centre includes clinicians specifically trained in paediatric brain injury and researchers who are leading experts in the field of youth concussion.
The centre is focused on getting kids back to doing what they love after sustaining a concussion, including recreational and competitive sports. The Concussion Centre focuses on three key pillars: education, research, and clinical services. It is the interaction between these pillars that makes the Holland Bloorview Concussion Centre unique. Our education program and clinical services are informed by the most up-to-date research in the field of paediatric concussion and our research lab aims to uncover answers to questions that are generated through our educational and clinical programs.
Accelerating knowledge: mapping pediatric rehabilitation in Canada
Evidence must always inform health care improvements. In the paediatric rehabilitation sector, we know there is a lack of information related to access, effectiveness, efficiency and overall quality of service. While there have been significant advances in standardized and reliable data in the adult sector, paediatrics and rehabilitation have only recently been a focus.
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To help increase knowledge in our sector, this summer Holland Bloorview is mapping the state of paediatric rehabilitation nationally to understand the level and types of service delivery available. This work is being conducted in partnership with Canadian Association of Paediatric Health Centres (CAPHC) and will be shared at the CAPHC conference this fall.
This work will also inform CAPHC’s Paediatric Rehabilitation Reporting System (PRRS) initiative, which will for the first time provide benchmark data for pediatric rehabilitation organizations to better understand challenges and opportunities in this sector.
Inspiring our people: walking the talk with family centred care
Client and family centred care (CFCC) is one of Holland Bloorview’s core values and our organization believes that putting this value into action every day has a significant positive impact on the care experience of the clients and families we serve.
We know that to ensure CFCC is practiced throughout our organization we must support our employees and help them integrate the key actions and behaviours of CFCC into their daily work. We also know that a great way to learn is through simulation: watching or acting out realistic situations and then debriefing as a group.
Holland Bloorview’s Teaching and Learning Institute in collaboration with our Client and Family Integrated Care and Collaborative Practice teams began delivering CFCC simulation training to new and existing staff and students in 2014. An inter-professional group that included families developed the simulation scenarios used in the training.
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The feedback from participants has been overwhelmingly positive: the training has improved their understanding of CFCC, enhanced communication skills and confidence, and helped them make changes in their daily practice.
For more information about Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, visit www.hollandbloorview.ca, or follow us on Twitter @HBKidsHospital, Facebook and LinkedIn.