Day Medicine Unit

Nursing Manager: Christina Russell, RN

The Day Medicine Unit provides specialty focused care to children from newborns to age 18.  These children have been seen by physicians in our specialty clinics and referred by primary care community physicians to the unit for specific services, such as IV infusions and sedations for special procedures.  The unit can hold 10 patients at one time, with provision for overflow patients.  The nursing staff from our unit sees approximately 670 patients each month.

The unit is open between the hours of 7:30 AM and 7:30 PM, from Monday through Friday.  On-call is covered every day after hours, for a full 24 hours, and every weekend and holiday for the Medical Imaging Department sedations.  Additionally, Day Medicine has a Nurse Monitoring Program, which provides coverage weekdays and on weekends throughout the hospital to children who need special tests.  Monitoring Nurses assess, plan, and provide safe transport of children within the hospital for patients requiring special needs such as pulse oximetry and apnea monitoring. The unit also provides nurses for non-acute transport and monitoring to other agencies.

The unit serves as a home for a physician-nurse team dedicated to the care of children needing sedation. The sedation team works in conjunction with the Anesthesia Department to provide a spectrum of services.   The nurses from the Day Medicine Unit cover several areas:  Outpatient IV infusions, Day Medicine short procedures, Medical Imaging, including sedation for CT scans and MRIs, Cast Room procedures, EEGs, and interagency transports of inpatients. The nurses work with both inpatients and outpatients, as often the mentioned procedures apply to both groups.

Nurses working in Day Medicine are competent in sedation by testing, and are all PALS certified. As multiple areas are covered by this staff, multiple specialty skills are acquired and assignments may change throughout the day to meet the needs of the department. The ability of staff to adapt to change is key to the functioning of the unit.

The nurses strive to work with both families and patients to get the best outcome for the child.  We involve parents in the care of their child, encouraging them at the bedside.  The nurses also work with child-life therapists for their expertise on medical role-playing and education of procedures, so the child has the most positive hospital experience possible.