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Claire Bonaci
You’re watching the Microsoft us health and life sciences, confessions of health geeks podcast, a show that offers Industry Insight from the health geeks and data freaks of the US health and life sciences industry team. I’m your host Claire Bonaci. On this episode, we celebrate patient experience week with part one of a three part podcast series discussing the importance of patient experience. guest host Antoinette Thomas, our chief patient experience officer interviews a team from Children’s Hospital of Colorado, and representatives from an organization called childsplay, on the innovative new technologies they are adopting to enhance the experience of their patients.
Antoinette Thomas
This is the first of a three part series where we will be focusing on patient experience in honor and celebration of patient experience week, which is is taking place April 26 through the 30th. Today we have a special team with us. And this is a team from the Children’s Hospital of Colorado, as well as representatives of an organization called child’s play. These two organizations have worked together to bring really, really cool programs to the children who are patients at Children’s Hospital of Colorado. So with that said, I’m going to turn it over to our guests.
Abe Homer
Thanks so much, Toni. My name is Abe Homer. I’m the gaming Technology Specialist here at Children’s Hospital Colorado. In my role, I get to use different technologies like video games, virtual reality and robotics to help kids feel better. I also act as a subject matter expert and consultant for different providers, clinicians and developers.
Joe Albeitz
My name is Joe Albeitz. I’m a pediatric intensivist. So I’m an ICU doctor for children. I’m Associate Professor of Pediatrics at University of Colorado and I am also the medical director of Child Life.
Jenny Staub
Hi, I’m Jenny Staub. I’m one of the managers of the Child Life department at Children’s Hospital Colorado and I also help our team with research and quality improvement initiatives. Our child life team helps kids cope with the stressors of the health care setting, and help prepare them for what to expect during their visits time.
Eric Blandin
Hi, I’m Eric Landon, I’m the program director for Child’s Play charity. I oversee the game technology specialist programs, keeping them coordinated and and collaborating with each other to learn about best practices since is such a new thing and oversee the hospital programs.
Kirsten
And I’m Kirsten Carlisle, the director of philanthropy and partner experiences at Child’s Play charity. So my role is to help raise as much money as possible so that we can give the gift of play to so many of our children’s hospitals like Children’s Hospital Colorado.
Antoinette Thomas
So let’s start by talking a little bit with the children’s team, about your department. And if you would share a little bit with our audience about how Children’s Hospital is collaborating with Child’s Play, to bring the innovative programs that you have to your patients and families.
Abe Homer
Yeah, so it children’s Colorado, we’ve created what we call the XRP group, the extended realities program. And that’s a multidisciplinary group of doctors, nurses, various clinicians, anesthesiologists, different representatives from all across the hospital, and we kind of act as a catalyst to bring new technologies into the facilities to service our patients. And we we partner with Child’s Play very closely my role, my job would not exist without Child’s Play and without their help and support. So we are very happy to be partnering with them moving forward.
Jenny Staub
In addition, one of our you know, partnerships with Child’s Play is really looking at how we can leverage technology to help support our patients and families in the healthcare setting. Knowing that this setting can be very stressful and induce fear for a lot of children. Children have to undergo a lot of painful or stressful events, procedures and leveraging technology we have seen such a value. And with Child’s Play and their support. We’ve been able to really look at this really closely to guide best practice and conduct research in order to look at the efficacy of our practices and see how we can best support patients and families in this way.
Antoinette Thomas
I think that’s a very, very important point. Because, as we see more of this, more of these types of programs across children’s hospitals in the United States, I know there’s more and more demand for data to support it. And I also know with some of these children’s hospitals who are already utilizing similar technologies, but not to the extent that you are, and, you know, sometimes this is crossing over into how they apply it to clinical care. And whether or not this is impacting outcomes in any way. And whether or not this these types of technologies will become part of a standard of care if someone could share a little bit with our audience about the the demand inside the hospital, so, you know, once a patient is admitted, how do they find out or understand about what it is that your program offers? And, you know, how do they make a request for it, or is Child Life responsible for kind of initiating, you know, the relationship per se?
Abe Homer
I think it originates with child life, for sure. That’s where I get a lot of my referrals for my patients to do. Recreational gaming play or procedures supports, I think, as the program gets more and more well known throughout the facility, and you know, throughout the world, in general, nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists are learning about this and learning how they can apply this technology to their workflows. And that’s piquing their interest. So they’re starting to reach out directly to me. And place referrals, and I’m still able to work directly with the child life specialists to really tailor the interventions to the needs of this specific patients. So it’s kind of coming from all over the place right now, which is great.
Jenny Staub
And one of the things of Abe’s role is has been to really help train and support our child life specialists and other providers and clinicians who might not be as technologically savvy to embrace this technology and use it clinically with their patients as well. So it really helps spread the ability to use these devices and other technologies that we’re trying to integrate,
Joe Albeitz
Yes, that’s true, and we’re also making sure that we’re using this technology kind of bi directionally, this isn’t just us using the technology, on and for the kids, this is empowering the children. And if we think about it, this is all about play. Play is the defining characteristic of what it means to be a kid. And it’s not a frivolous activity for them. This is how kids learn about the world, that play is how they, they’ve learned about rules and consequences, how to, you know, interact with other people and to make bonds and overcome conflicts, it’s, it’s how they can give challenges to themselves, and how they can be present with them, how they can deal with failures, all these are critical life skills, trying out different roles, different personalities. And that’s the thing, it’s incredibly hard to do when you’re suddenly removed from your home, your school, your family, you’re surrounded by odd people in a weird location, you’re uncomfortable, sometimes you’re in pain, it’s really hard. And it’s disruptive to what it is to be a child. And that is to play. So we’re trying to make sure that we’re giving them stuff to, to let them be in charge to empower them to continue to be who they are, who they need to become, while they’re here in hospital. That means that just letting child’s life apply this, but it means giving these tools to children’s that they can do it themselves.
Antoinette Thomas
That is so validating from the perspective of someone and nurse myself, who has taken care of children, but also now who has spent 15 years in the healthcare IT industry. Because those of us that are on this side of it, you know, working for the technology companies, we take our job very seriously. And you know, we wake up every day hoping that our technology will be used for good. And so that is so wonderful to hear. And I guess that leads me into my next question about what technologies you are using and what would the application of these technologies be with the children.
Abe Homer
So right now we’re using augmented reality technology for distraction techniques in our burn clinic for bandage changes. And we’ve been getting a lot of really great anecdotal results. I’ll let Jenny kind of speak more to the research side of it. But it’s been a really amazing intervention for those kids in that unit.
Jenny Staub
And we are conducting a research study that is kind of looking at the Benefits and efficacy related to using augmented reality with patients in this setting, I was really intrigued by the idea of using augmented reality because it not only allows the patient to get to engage in the distraction of the augmented reality, but it also does allow them to engage with the room at the same time. So especially for kids who are undergoing brand dressing changes, that’s typically a series of dressing changes. So you really want them to develop some mastery and a sense of control in the environment so that each dressing change kind of builds, you know, their confidence and coping and their ability to navigate that experience. And augmented reality is a really good fit for that, because it allows them to engage in a game or some other distraction on the on an app, but also be able to see what the nurse is doing, see what the bandage and the wound looks like, if they want to engage in that way. So they really get to kind of choose how much they want to be distracted, versus how much they want to be aware of the environment. So it’s been really great. And we have been really looking at, you know, how do you do this best, and what is the most effective strategy for integrating this into a live clinical setting where obviously, you want to be efficient, and you want the kid to be calm and cooperative. And so we’ve been looking at that. And it’s been really, really interesting to look at the data
Joe Albeitz
playing off of that journey. We’re also looking at how best to integrate that with the expertise of staff, right. So this isn’t a technology that we’re necessarily just putting on a child and walking away. I think, definitely anecdotally through through the staff, we find that that’s fun, it can be helpful, but it there’s a whole other level of support and engagement that you can get when you can bring in the social aspect and the professional expertise of the child life specialist, for instance, into the experience, you can really deepen a child’s engagement, you can time when a child needs to be distracted, or when they need to be a little bit more interactive with the outside environment, not necessarily the experience in knowing how to use this really, as a clinical tool. is it’s one of the challenges. But it’s also one of the more exciting, I think, promising parts of this type of technology.
Eric Blandin
I think, I’ll throw in, just on the childsplay side, we get a lot of asks from different hospitals for different kinds of equipment. Some of them are informed asks, and some of them are not necessarily though they just asked for the thing that that someone told them they should get. And having a leader like Colorado who is doing this research and sort of really exploring the different pros and cons of different types of equipment and different technologies helps us with knowing which which grants to approve, and and which grants to maybe reach back out to that’d be okay, you asked for this thing. But maybe this other thing would be better for this purpose that you stated and sort of having a conversation with them.
Joe Albeitz
That’s a great point. Because, you know, by far, there are very few technologies that we are not using right now in the hospital. augmented reality, virtual reality standard gaming systems. We’re working with robotics and programming, more physical kind of making skills, a lot of artistic things, bringing in music, there’s so many different ways to reach different children at different times at different developmental stages, you really do need that, that broad look at what is available.
Abe Homer
And we really, we really tried with any technology that we bring into the hospital to make it multimodal. So originally, we were using augmented reality for this this burn study research. But we’ve been able to leverage that same technology for procedures supports with occupational therapists, we’ve been able to leverage it, as Joe said, For socialization, to keep patients and families connected. So everything that we examine and that we’re trying to use clinically, we try and see how we can use it in different novel ways to, you know, make the kids hospital experience that much better.
Antoinette Thomas
You guys are doing some really exciting work. It’s also very life changing work. And I don’t want to end this podcast without also talking a little bit about this exciting project that’s in the works. I know. I met with you all via phone a few weeks ago. And you were talking about this project, which really got me excited and I took things back internally into Microsoft to share this so we can figure out how to amplify it for you but tell the audience a little bit more about the gaming symposium that you’re planning so they can understand a little bit about it and Also so you can kind of spread the word.
Abe Homer
Yeah, we’re really excited. In partnership with childs play, children’s Colorado will be hosting the very first pediatric gaming technology Symposium on September 22, and 23rd 2021. There’ll be completely virtual. And it’s the first it’s the first conference of its kind that really focuses on the use of this technology specifically for pediatrics. And the patients as well as all the staff that that go along with that kind of care.
Eric Blandin
It’s open to people that are actively doing this kind of stuff like Abe and others at children’s Colorado, but also folks that are interested in this in this kind of thing. So students have that, that sort of nature, that want this sort of career but also, hospital staff that might be don’t have a game technology specialist right now, but are very interested in what that might look like at their hospital. So it’s has sort of dual purpose,
Jenny Staub
I am really excited about it. Because I think that there’s going to be such a benefit to be able to network and collaborate together. This is technology is really growing and its integration into pediatric healthcare. But it’s, it’s still pretty niche-y. And so be able to be able to connect with people all over the country who are trying to do this work and really learn from each other. And what about what everyone’s doing, I think it’s going to be so beneficial.
Antoinette Thomas
Well, on that note, it’s time for us to end our conversation. But before we do, is there a way for our guests to understand how to perhaps learn more about the gaming symposium or register for the event itself.
We’re still building our registration infrastructure and getting all that set up. But as soon as it’s ready to go, we will definitely let you know and everyone else know.
Antoinette Thomas
team, I want to thank you again for joining us today on the confessions of health geeks podcast and for being a part of our celebration, and recognition of patient experience week. Thank you for joining us.
Claire Bonaci
Thank you all for watching. Please feel free to leave us questions or comments below and check back soon for more content from the HLS industry team.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
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