Under the leadership of Paul F. Levy, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston engaged in a program to eliminate preventable harm to patients, with a remarkable level of transparency to the public about the hospital’s progress towards that goal.
The question of long-term ventilation for children with progressive conditions, such as muscular dystrophy or metabolic disease, is one of the enduring puzzles in paediatric ethics. Is it ethical to put a child on invasive mechanical ventilation when they will never be able breathe again on their own, and will inevitably die from their condition?
Several Grand Rounds in 2020, the 150th year of the Children’s Hospital, will highlight the development of services, some looking back and looking forward. This opening Grand Round will review the innovations in diabetes, adolescent health, and links between the hospital and the community. Dr John Court was a paediatrician who had a key role in service development at The Royal Children’s Hospital from the late 1950’s to the 1990’s including research and clinical care.
Today, 80% of children treated for cancer will survive. However, a significant proportion of survivors are at risk of infertility, due to toxicity of their treatment. The Royal Children’s Hospital is a leader worldwide in promoting discussion of fertility issues at the time of treatment, and offering options that might be able to preserve fertility for the future.
Can men who are abusive to their intimate partners still be good fathers? This is a question the family violence team at RCH are asked almost daily. As a children’s hospital, the RCH is in a unique position to help children experiencing family violence and the best interests of the child are our priority as we work alongside families.
Social media holds considerable potential for health promotion activities, as it addresses some of the barriers in traditional methods of health communication by increasing accessibility, interaction and engagement with the community. Now in its fourth year, the RCH National Child Health Poll has evolved to increasingly use novel and innovative strategies to engage parents and carers via RCH digital channels.
For the last quarter of a century the Centre for Community Child Health has been working with families, communities and government to improve outcomes of all children by focusing on how to provide great care everywhere. This has included clinical services through to place-based service innovation across health and education.
GenV’s vision is to help solve complex issues affecting today’s children and adults through an entire Australian state becoming a single platform that enhances research speed, capacity and translation. Led from the Melbourne Children’s Campus, the GenV Cohort will be open to the families of all 170,000 Victorian newborns over 2021-2. At its foundation are consent; existing geospatial, clinical and administrative data; biosamples; GenV-specific data; and melding observational and intervention design
All babies cry. What is normal and what is abnormal? Is the crying excessive or is that mother’s perception. What causes the crying – hunger, over handling, “wind”, “colic”, “silent reflux”, allergy?
One of the growing worldwide challenges in paediatric health care is how to understand and respond to some of the many ways in which families of sick children use social media. This presentation draws together a number of strands of thought from my recent sabbatical in the UK, where the paediatric hospital staff are still experiencing the flow-on effects of the high-profile (and high-conflict) social media campaigns run by parents of Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans. I will present some data from two recent studies of how families in UK and Australia use social media, especially crowd-funding, and then raise for discussion some of the ethical and social challenges arising from social media use.
