Building relationships through family-centered care

Being unsure of what the future holds for your child’s health can be a scary place to be. So many of our families experience a number of emotions the first time they come to us for care. With the addition of Family Faculty, we have been able to ease the tension that so many of our patients and their families experience on a daily basis.

I received an e-mail last week about our Family Faculty and knew this would be the perfect example to share in this month’s employee recognition blog post.

Over the past few weeks Amy Myers-Morris has had several families with whom she is working with share their struggles with various hardships. While reflecting on how she can better assist them, she shared with me her reflection on how thankful she is to have our Family Faculty.

Luciana Mendes-McGuire (New Brunswick) has been incredibly helpful with these families recently, as they are Spanish-speaking. In addition to trying to understand new terminology pertaining to their child’s health, the families struggle with trying to understand a language they are not familiar with. Thankfully, Luciana has been able to translate the information they need to make decisions for their children’s care.

This has been such a team effort, to work with these recent families. Megan Fennelly (Hamilton) and Sharon Clarken (Hamilton) helped Amy to think about how to approach each of these families, to determine what help they may need and how to be sensitive to the different cultures. Both Megan and Sharon put in a heavy amount of research to gather resources in the community for Luciana to share with the moms, as well as researched insurance options for one of the families!

One of the families expressed a need for “long-term” assistance, so Megan hit the ground running to find organizations in the area – food pantries, clothing drives, etc – that the family could receive help from. Sharon even provided clothes that her own son had grown out of.

The families that Amy and the Family Faculty team have been working with have expressed how incredibly thankful they are that Children’s Specialized Hospital is a support to them, and how gracious they are for the dedication from Amy, Megan, Sharon, and Luciana through this challenging time.

This is just one example of how Family Faculty has become a key player in helping our families at Children’s Specialized Hospital. Knowing that they are available to assists with our families helps our clinical teams better serve the individual child and also lets the family know that Children’s Specialized is a beacon of hope for them.

Please join me in sharing your memories of working with Family Faculty below.