ADHD Across the Lifespan Early Onset Up To Age 25
Featuring Edward M. Hallowell, M.D.
The Winston School San Antonio presents the 20th Annual Learning Disabilities Symposium on January 30, 2010 at 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
“This major expansion project is a direct result of constant monitoring of the health care needs of the community and the entire South Texas region. When the children’s hospital opened in 1998, we anticipated having between 10,000 and 12,000 pediatric emergency visits per year. Despite lack of space, the team of doctors, nurses and support staff provided care to nearly 58,000 children last year while maintaining excellent patient satisfaction scores. Clearly, more space was needed.”
Phase 1 includes 21 individual treatment rooms including two fully equipped trauma rooms, two triage bays, a discharge holding area and five Fast Track beds. Each treatment room has a flat screen TV and play area. Isolation rooms are available that provide a special door that seals when closed and a private restroom for the child that reduces the risk of contagious disease exposure. The triage bays are for the evaluation of children’s conditions upon their arrival. Fast Track beds are for patients who most likely will not need admission to the hospital, but need medical attention for such conditions as colds, stomach aches and minor cuts. 
Phase I also includes a new façade for the hospital along with a new public entrance, a new entrance for walk-in emergency visits and a new entrance for patients arriving by ambulance. With the second phase, scheduled for completion this fall, the emergency center will cover 30,000 square feet with 32 treatment rooms.
The kid-friendly atmosphere of the hospital is both fun and functional, incorporating primary colors from floor to ceiling with colorfully cut floor tiles and glass mobiles consisting of giant colorful geometric shapes hanging from cathedral ceilings.
“As we are on the verge of nearly 60,000 visits a year, by the time most San Antonio children reach adulthood, they most likely will have visited our emergency department,” added McLoone. “That’s why every child is treated as if he or she were our very own—as we hope to leave a lasting and positive impression on both the child and the child’s families.
Located at 7700 Floyd Curl Drive in the South Texas Medical Center, Methodist Children’s Hospital opened in fall 1998 as the only children’s hospital in San Antonio and South Texas built especially for children. At Methodist Children’s Hospital services include not only the outstanding new emergency facility, but also the area’s largest newborn intensive care unit with 78 beds, a pediatric intensive care unit, heart surgery, neuro surgery, and blood and marrow stem cell transplantation for children with cancer and rare autoimmune disorders.
Wendy Rigby - KENS 5 Eyewitness News
Video available from www.mysanantonio.com here.
It has taken heroic efforts to get critical patients out of harm’s way. Now that the immediate threat from Ike is over, some of the smallest evacuees are headed home.
The journey starts at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio, where tiny Chris Angel Chavez, a premature baby from Brownsville, has been cared for since he was evacuated a week ago.
“It takes a lot of special equipment, special oxygen, nitrogen sometimes, nitric oxide, depending on what the patients need. We provide that critical care in the air and on the road,” Transport Team Director Angela Crawford said.
“On the road” means riding in an ambulance around Loop 410 to the airport, where 300 pounds of equipment surround the 2-pound baby as he’s loaded onto a plane for the 270-mile flight back to his family.
Once on board, the Methodist Children’s Hospital transport team makes sure Chris Angel has everything he needs to remain stable. At only 13 days old, he’s still critically ill and needs constant attention to his vital signs on his trip across the Texas skies.
On the ground, the palm trees of Brownsville and another ambulance greet the transport team.
“There’s a lot of satisfaction in taking a baby from a situation where he can’t get the proper care,” pediatric transport nurse Pat Turner said. “And bring them into San Antonio where they can get the care they deserve.”
Valley Regional Medical Center staff welcomes back their tiny evacuee, and relieved parents are happy he’s closer to home, even though they were glad to know he was out of potential danger.
“It was very, very hard. A day didn’t go by that I didn’t shed a tear and cry just wondering how my baby was,” said Alma Rosa Chavez, the mother of Chris Angel.
The circle now complete with the family back together, the San Antonio team gets back on the plane for the flight north — happy with a job well done, knowing this is the first of many return flights yet to come.
Even though Chris Angel is back in Brownsville, the baby will spend the next two to three months in the hospital, until he’s big enough to go home.
We are very pleased to announce the addition of two new staff members with Pediatric Outreach: Cyndi Voyce and Penny Allen. Cyndi will be taking over the Pediatric Educator’s vacancy. Penny will be occupying a newly-created position of Perinatal Outreach Coordinator and Project Manager. Please don’t hesitate to send your requests for Pediatric and Perinatal education to both Cyndi and Penny! (more…)
Ideas begin with you! Our color-coded resuscitation poster was the “brain child” of Irene Lerma, (front row second from right) from Fort Duncan Medical Center, Eagle Pass, Texas. When discussing updates of our weight-per-kilogram-based resuscitation poster, she stated that the majority of their pediatric resuscitations were conducted by using a color-coded tape, and suggested that such a poster would be of great help for their staff. While inquiring of other rural and community hospitals how pediatric codes were run, I found that most hospitals were split between using a weight-based process of coding versus a color-coded method; hence two posters! Kudos to Irene Lerma for sharing her great ideas with us!