(H7) PEDS Part 1: Less Pain with Pokes: How a Vascular Access Team and a Child Life Specialist are Collaboratively Transforming Pediatric Procedures/ Part 2: Maintaining a Lifeline for a Little Boy with a Complex Cardiac Defect

Part 1: Less Pain with Pokes: How a Vascular Access Team and a Child Life Specialist are Collaboratively Transforming Pediatric Procedures
Presenters are Shaila Green and Renee Caskey
This presentation highlights the integral role of Certified Child Life Specialists (CCLS) within a Vascular Access Team (VAT) to enhance pediatric care during vascular access procedures. These two professions partner together to assess patients to develop tailored care plans that address both medical and coping needs. Utilizing their expertise in child development and psychosocial support, CCLSs reduce patient anxiety through individualized preparation, teaching of coping strategies, and implementing coping plans during procedures, leading to improved patient outcomes and satisfaction. Child life focused metrics collected since August 2024 highlight improvements in patient coping during vascular access procedures, demonstrating the value of this partnership. Moving forward, the VAT aims to explore strategies to reduce sedation, further emphasizing the importance of the unique collaboration to provide holistic, compassionate care for pediatric patients.

Part 2: Maintaining a Lifeline for a Little Boy with a Complex Cardiac Defect
Presenter is Kathy Grieser
Patients born with congenital heart defects (CHD) are often times dependent on vascular access for life sustaining intravenous medications. Due to their complex anatomy and vascular structure as well as the additional challenges with pediatric patients in general, vascular access can be especially difficult to establish and maintain in pediatric CHD patients. This unusual case study focuses on these challenges in an eight-year-old male born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS). This patient experienced numerous cardiac surgeries, cardiac catheterizations and interventions throughout his life and required several medications in an attempt to bridge him to a heart transplant. He required numerous vascular access devices throughout an eight-year period, much of which was living at home with long-term vascular access and infusions. Through exhaustive collaboration, careful planning and sometimes non-traditional approaches and meticulous care from a multidisciplinary care team, this patient maintained his PICC lines without any bloodstream infections or serious events for several years.