Learning trip in Pediatric Ward, Srinagarind Hospital
These days, I had a special and impressive trip in Pediatric Ward, Srinagarind Hospital. I am greatly thankful to Ajarn Kesanee and Ajarn Pulsuk.
Though the 3 days-trip was very short and not enough, Ajarn Kesanee took me to travel the each area of the ward, introduced me the setting of the ward, and the role of different levels of nurses, as well as provides me exceptional knowledge to help me understand what APN is.
In the ward, it is surprisingly that the patients lived in hospital had their own space, and they were free to design the space to make themselves comfortable like living at home. As well as, the patients had good relationships with the doctors and nurses, which was difficult to be found in my hometown, where the most of the hospitals stressed on the treatment, and were not aware of the importance of the relationship among patients, doctors, and nurses.
To construct good relationship among patients, doctors, and nurses can help doctors and nurses understand the thoughts of patients, support doctors and nurses to provide holistic and more appropriate health care services to patients, improve the quality of caring and the life of patients. On the other hand, the patients can learn more about their disease from doctors and nurses, to empower themselves and take good care of themselves, as well as understand why doctors and nurses had this action for caring them. For Srinagarind Hospital, it can be found that they tried their best to hold a lot of activities to construct and improve the relationships among patients, doctors, and nurses, which is worth to be learned by Chinese hospital. It is certainly that the better outcome can be got based on such good relationships, in other words, friendly collaboration among patients, doctors, and nurses.
Secondly, I got knowledge about palliative care. The pediatric ward is the first to set up palliative care program in the population of oncology children in 2004. As holistic care, palliative care is provided from physical, psycho-social, and spiritual needs aspects. The program recruited the children who were in the process of chemotherapy and radiation. If the children complete the chemotherapy or radiation, or they are already cured, they will be excluded from this program. And this program did not limit in care services, also include research, and academic activities (e.g. workshop, training program). Till now, many children in the palliative care program got kind caring and had better outcome, which can be the evidences to demonstrate the success and essentiality of palliative care. Moreover, in the framework of this program, the care providers include physicians (oncologist), pharmacist, pain team, volunteer, APN (co-ordinator), Faculty of Nursing, child life worker (teacher), social workers, and OPD/ward nurses. Since this program held by the hospital, the community level was not included. In fact, In my opinion, the staffs worked in PCU are those people who quietly closed to the residents, certainly, including the oncology children and their families, and may have richer information about their living area than the hospital. So they can get the changeable information timely and help those who are from hospital to provide more appropriate care. To cover the level of community, the palliative program will be expanded, and the hospital and the community can share their knowledge and information with each other to improve palliative care.
However, compared with China, till now, the concept of palliative care is quite new. The hospitals still stress on the treatment, and outside the hospital, the health care services in community are at the stage of beginning. Therefore, palliative care program can not be found in China, and palliative care for many healthcare providers is still a concept in the stage of learning, and do not apply to the further practice.
Finally, in the 3 days, I further understood what APN is. APNs stands for Advanced Practicing Nursing and include master’s and doctoral degrees, at least, they should have 3 years of clinic experiences. In the past, I always confused of the APN and Nursing Specialist. I think both of the two are specialist in their own area, which are very similar. But now, I understand the differences. It is no problem that we view APNs as the specialist, because it is a fact. However, different from Nursing Specialist, which may focus on skills or just one part of the whole area, APNs should cover the whole area, including everything in this area, as well as they had the responsibility of setting of the project and developing of this area, which is not limited in the routine nursing care work. Their work is in the upper level, and is broader, more complete, and more innovative.
There are 11 APNs in different areas in Srinagarind Hospital, and the total number of APNs in Thailand is already more than one hundred. They tried their best to develop nursing care, health care services, and researches, and promote the development of nursing in Thailand, as well as in the world wide. But till now, it is upset that there is no APN in China. Though many nurses are interesting in this concept of APN, the resource of information and knowledge is limited. They just heard of this concept, they did not know the concrete definition of APN, the role of APN in nursing care system, and the differences of APN compared with other nursing degree. I hope that I can help them understand the concept of APN, and the government set up the policy of APN and qualification system to make the nursing work broader and more complete in the future.
In the past 3 days, this learning trip empowered me and left a profound impression on me. And I am real lucky in that I received the great blessings from the ceremony of King’s mum, and had an excellent teacher who provided me informative education and patient explanations with her warm-heart. I expect to have more opportunities to learn more from here in the future, as well as invite Ajarn Kesanee to China to teach us about APN and share the knowledge about pediatric nursing care and palliative care program. Finally, I owe a great amount of respect and gratitude to Ajarn Kesanee, Ajarn Pulsuk and many other persons who teach me, take care of me in this short trip.
Vicky (Chao Feng)
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