Bothwell partners with Children’s Mercy, MU Health Care for pediatric training day

Two Level I trauma centers came together in Sedalia on July 30 for a day-long collaboration to help Bothwell Regional Health Center’s Emergency Department team sharpen their skills in caring for children.

About 60 Bothwell nurses, providers and resident physicians took part in the pediatric training event at the Bothwell Education Center. Staff from Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City and the University of Missouri School of Medicine’s Shelden Clinical Simulation Center led the training, giving Bothwell’s team hands-on experience with pediatric trauma and medical emergencies.

“This is a big deal that doesn’t happen very often,” said Mike Shipp, Bothwell’s Emergency Department director. “Two Level I trauma centers came to Sedalia to help train our providers to give the best possible care to our pediatric population.”

The day included four training sessions along with skill-specific sessions for physicians and staff to practice procedures such as critical airway management and chest tube insertion. Participants worked inside the Shelden Center’s Mobile Sim unit using high-fidelity simulation mannequins as well as in classrooms at the Education Center.

Whether a pediatric patient stays at Bothwell or is transferred depends on several factors, Shipp said, including the patient’s age, condition and the resources available on staff. Bothwell’s general surgery team can manage cases such as appendicitis, yet many pediatric medical patients are sent to a higher level of care.

“Anytime we do simulation, whether it’s trauma or medical, it makes us better at what we’re doing,” Shipp said. “It builds muscle memory in a chaotic situation, so you don’t have to think about it. It becomes second nature.”

Jennifer Flint, MD, medical director of Pediatric Critical Care Transport at Children’s Mercy, said the goal of the training was to help Bothwell’s emergency medical team be ready to care for childhood emergencies, even when a child ultimately needs to go elsewhere for specialized treatment.

“Our goal is to help the providers here be prepared to take care of childhood emergencies,” Flint said. “It’s important to make sure we can stabilize kids even if they are going to another facility. We still have to stabilize and treat the acute process.”

Misty Todd, MD, program director of the Bothwell-University of Missouri Rural Family Medicine Residency, said partnerships like this one are essential for the program and a rural community hospital.

“The value of having our residents and attending physicians take part in this training cannot be overstated,” Todd said. “We do not have the resources of a large hospital system to build this kind of curriculum and run these simulations on our own, so a partnership like this gives our residents hands-on experience with pediatric emergencies they might not otherwise get in a rural setting.”

Bothwell hopes to make the pediatric training day an annual event.