Copyright 2006 The Dallas Morning News
By ROBERT MILLER
Dallas Morning News
When there’s a critical need involving the welfare of children, two institutions immediately come to mind: Children’s Medical Center Dallas and Crystal Charity Ball.
A partnership of the two could almost guarantee success. That’s the rosy outlook for the Children’s Pediatric Emergency Services Network.
This program, supervised by Dr. Maeve Sheehan, medical director of transport services at Children’s, will involve a program of intensive training for emergency medical service providers. The hospital will do most of the training.
That includes students, seasoned providers, nurses and respiratory therapists as well as physicians in emergency medicine, intensive care (neonatal, general and cardiac), surgical, cardiac, pulmonary and radiology.
Crystal Charity Ball, the volunteer women’s organization that has given more than $65 million to address children’s medical, educational and sociological issues since it was founded in 1952, contributed $1.435 million Tuesday to create a system for pediatric emergency care anchored by Children’s.
It will serve the five leading adult nonprofit hospitals in the area - Baylor University Medical Center, Methodist Health System, Parkland Health & Hospital System, Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
Children’s is one of 14 pediatric Trauma Level I centers in the nation and the only one in Texas, justifying its leading role in this new program.
Treating and transport
“This program will provide the hospitals the chance to receive first-class training in caring for children ages birth to 18,” Dr. Sheehan said.
“It will also enable them to better triage - establish priorities of medical treatment - and stabilize pediatric patients in the best possible way and thus increase the survival rate for pediatric emergency cases.”
The network is all about treatment combined with transport.
Children’s Medical Center leases a fixed-wing airplane and a helicopter that work with its own ambulances based at Dallas Love Field.
In 1999, Children’s became the first pediatric transport team in the nation to receive accreditation from the Commission Accreditation of Medical Transport Services in all three modes of transport - ground (ambulances), helicopter and fixed-wing, Dr. Sheehan said.
The airplane is used for transports of greater than 100 miles, and helicopter and ambulance use are based upon the condition of the patient and distance involved.
But Dr. Sheehan emphasizes that “it is the expertise of the Children’s transport team inside the transport vehicles, not the vehicles themselves, that makes the difference in the lifesaving care that children in our community receive.”
Crystal Ball 2005 chairwoman Jill Smith recounted how her group became interested in funding the project:
“Two years ago, in April of 2004, the Crystal Charity Ball convened a Long Range Planning and Focus Group under the leadership of Connie O’Neill with the purpose of investigating and researching the long-term - not short-term - critical needs of children in our community.”
Over five months, she said, the committee met with community leaders and asked the same question: What is the single biggest void in service to our children?
“The answer to that question quickly became apparent to us all,” Ms. Smith said.
“We saw a great and unmet need to improve the coordination of pediatric emergency care in the Dallas area.
“Our membership endorsed, and embraced by majority vote, the Crystal Charity Ball Signature Project, then named the Pediatric Emergency Services Network.”
Ms. Smith said the five Crystal Charity Ball donors who gave special gifts to this project were Dee Torbert, Sharon and Terry Worrell, and Sue and Joe Justice.
Tailored to needs
Dr. Sheehan said the training program will be tailored to each of the five hospitals’ needs. Because UT Southwestern trains many of the area’s EMS providers, its role is especially important.
Dr. Sheehan noted that the multiyear, comprehensive curriculum will focus on equipping first-responders with the skills and training they need to assess and treat infants and children.
“These are the professionals whose decisions and actions can literally mean the difference in life and death, and that is why this network is so crucial for empowering Children’s Medical Center to share and impart its expertise.”