2022 Cardinal Glennon Gratitude Report

Gratitude Report 2022

The Dorothy and Larry Dallas Heart Center

Every month, The Dorothy and Larry Dallas Heart Center team performs more than 20 operations, sometimes on babies weighing fewer than six pounds. These tiny humans require the utmost attention to detail by highly skilled cardiothoracic surgeons who use specialized tools.

One example is the microTEE (Transesophageal Echo) ultrasound imaging probe (seen to the left), a rare device only used by the top cardiothoracic teams in the country. This probe contains a camera and goes down a baby’s esophagus, giving doctors a close look at the heart, capturing every angle without making a single incision. Before the microTEE, a surface echocardiogram would take images of the heart through the chest wall. Now, our team can receive real-time 3D images to make the best diagnoses.

Thanks to generosity from donors like you, SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital has the technological edge that gives our surgeons the very best quality imaging to improve surgical accuracy and patient outcomes.

Staff Education

Donor support provides SSM Health Cardinal Glennon caregivers access to continuous professional development so they can keep up with new information and technological advances that make a measurable impact on the lives of children.

Last summer, 17-year-old Glennon kid, Frank, underwent a heart transplant and was having severe anxiety attacks with uncontrollable shaking due to the trauma of his diagnosis. With the help of Duo Dog Thor, Frank worked through his emotions and processed his trauma. Thor was by Frank’s side for every milestone, from sitting up in a chair for 30 minutes to walking for the first time after surgery.

“Thor’s presence – him lying on you, next to you, his deep breathing – is comforting,” says Abbie Hedgpeth, certified child life specialist. “We do a lot of deep breathing exercises with patients. Thor takes huge, long deep breaths. I encourage patients to mimic him when they are so worked up and anxious that it’s hard to come out of it.”

Before Frank, Thor wasn't utilized with post-transplant patients because of their weakened immune systems. Thanks to donor support, Abbie attended the 2022 Facility Dog Summit in Oklahoma, where she learned benchmarking information and best practices from other pediatric hospitals with Infection Control and Transplant teams. As a result, Abbie and Thor performed their first post-transplant intervention with Frank just two months later. “The difference Thor and I made in Frank’s recovery was only possible because of what I learned from that conference,” says Abbie.

» FACILITY DOG SUMMIT FOLLOW

The Orthwein Center for Infant and Child Nutrition

Babies in The Dana Brown Neonatal Intensive Care Unit are some of our most fragile patients, so every precaution must be taken to ensure their safety. Considered a cutting edge advantage nationally, a milk lab is a dedicated facility strictly for the preparation of specialized human milk feedings and formulas located away from busy patient care areas to reduce the risk of contamination and errors. This highly advanced area is staffed by dietitians, pharmacists, nurses and milk technicians, specially trained professionals responsible for mixing, verifying and delivering custom formulas to between 50 and 70 patients every day.

Thanks to the generosity of our donors, SSM Health Cardinal Glennon’s new milk lab, The Orthwein Center for Infant and Child Nutrition, is complete.

Safety Program

Donor support makes our SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Safety Program possible. The Injury Prevention team, in partnership with with fire districts, law enforcement and community agencies, participated in more than 200 community outreach events last year, offering resources to keep children safe at home, in the car and during play.

» T OGETHER, WE MADE AN IMPACT!

660 car seats installed

56 Baby Safety 101 classes taught

87 new Child Passenger Safety Technicians trained

241 portable cribs distributed 404 car seats distributed 1,745 safety gun locks distributed

LEARN MORE ABOUT SAFE PLAY

740 bike helmets distributed

Reach Out and Read

Reading to young children increases vocabulary, curiosity and memory. It builds listening skills and is a foundation for academic success. Because of you, 70,000 books and educational resources were given to children at their well-child visits at 50 pediatric practices across St. Louis through the Reach Out and Read program. This National Pediatric Early Literacy Program was founded in 2005 at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon and is the only model in the U.S. endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

DID YOU KNOW?

80%

80% of a child’s brain is formed between birth and age 3

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Care for Caregivers

At SSM Health Cardinal Glennon, our health care professionals take patient care seriously and feel a responsibility to provide patients with exceptional care. They can’t do that if they don’t make self-care a priority. Care for Caregivers, a hospital peer-to-peer support program saw an incredible year of growth.

Thanks to donor funding, a full-time program manager facilitates the SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Care for Caregivers Program, forming and growing valuable internal and external partnerships. In addition, a permanent Zen room for staff was created and dedicated on the third floor that includes a massage chair, self-care resources, aromatherapy, music and more.

» IN 2022:

732 staff referred for support – up from 276 in 2021

2,100+ staff visited the Traveling Zen Room – up from 660 in 2021

121 staff attended five 1-hour life coach sessions

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Shining Star School

Thanks to donor support, the Shining Star School is now able to provide special education to patients staying in the hospital. Prior to the addition of this service, our teachers were seeing an average of three children per week who had mild to moderate disabilities and were serving them with limited resources. Our patient population includes children with a wide range of mild to severe disabilities, form visual impairment to autism which requires more specialized resources for their learning needs. In the first six months of having special education being offered, we have supported 54 patients with various adaptive tools and communications systems, advocated for modified materials and technology devices and educated medical staff on best practices for interacting with patients with special education needs.

The Costas Center

The Costas Center at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon is a member of multiple research groups – most notably the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) and Beat Childhood Cancer (BCC) – that offer front-line treatments, research to determine the underlying biology of the disease and clinical trials for new and emerging treatments.

SSM Health Cardinal Glennon was one of the first and remains the only pediatric hospital in the region to join the BCC group. The 50 BCC member institutions have focused their research on children's tumors at diagnosis and relapse, working to understand how each tumor is behaving and why. This allows doctors to add targeted therapies to standard of care, laser-focused for each child’s unique needs.

Donor support allows us to have two specially trained clinical research nurses who make it possible for SSM Health Cardinal Glennon to participate in these trials, from managing patient safety to data management and everything in between.

DID YOU KNOW?

30 30 90% 90% 10 10

Costas Center patients were enrolled in a promising clinical trial for neuroblastoma. The trial drug improved survival rates to as high as over the last years and is now in review for FDA approval.

SEE MORE IMPACT!

Child Life

When 5-year-old Cormac started talking about his extreme thirst, parents Brad and Catherine were concerned. With a family history of diabetes, a simple urine test turned into a finger prick…and then a full blood draw. It was Type 1 diabetes.

Cormac’s fear of needles was so problematic that he had to be sedated when he arrived at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon for treatment.

On his first day of hospitalization, a child life specialist spent 30 minutes with him. Cormac adorably says, “She saved my life,” of the child life specialist who helped him understand his disease and how he needed to use needles to stay healthy.

A few days after he got home, Cormac received a card in the mail from his caregivers at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon. He held it for a long time before saying, “I miss them.” His experience could have been terrifying and traumatic, yet our Child Life team ensured it was one of love, hope and healing.

Now Cormac is a healthy, energetic 6-year-old who gets shots of insulin several times a day with no fear of needles…a bravery he credits to the child life specialist at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon.

Violence Intervention Program

The Life Outside of Violence (LOV) Program at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon was formed as part of a citywide collaborative effort to reduce preventable deaths in the St. Louis region caused by interpersonal violence. Its mission is to promote positive alternatives to violence to reduce retaliation, criminal involvement, re-injury and death among youth who are victims of violence.

Through direct intervention, counseling and mentorship, the LOV Program helps these high-risk youth reduce their risk factors for violent behavior. “Every child coming into LOV has had a different experience,” says Melik Coffey, MSW, LCSW, program coordinator for LOV at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon. “Therefore, their interventions and goals will be different. No matter what,” says Coffey, “we take a look at the whole person and their whole system of care…who is in their life? Most of these youth are disconnected from a stable support system, so that is often the place we start.”

Thanks to generous donor support, the LOV program at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon has grown to include a second staff member.

“I am uniquely positioned to be present and to plant that seed of possibility,” says Coffey. “For some, we may never know the impact of our work. But if I can give one person hope, then my job is worth it.”

Glennon Kid Jeremiah, just one of the many victims of violence to come through our doors each year

» In 2022, 15 youth enrolled in LOV and, in the five years since LOV launched, there have been zero deaths among youth involved in our program.