CRITICAL CARE The Division of Pediatric Critical Care is dedicated to the delivery of state-of-the-art child and family centered care for critically ill and injured children. The division’s mission is accomplished by a collaborative group that champions a multidisciplinary approach to care, the incorporation of best available evidence into clinical practice, and acquisition of new knowledge through clinical research. Attention to patient safety, continuous performance improvement, and education of physicians, nurses, and other care team members is paramount. The Pediatric Intensive Care Unit staff faced the challenge and uncertainty of Covid-19 and took their responsibilities professionally and without wavering. The PICU team embraced the challenge and was integrated into all aspects of systems improvement to provide high quality care for children with Covid-19, while maintaining the safety of all our team members. The PICU quickly created and implemented clinical management pathways for delivery of respiratory therapies, processes for managing patients with acute deterioration, and maintained a continuous flow of education and updates as needed for a rapidly changing management schema. It is through these efforts that children suffering from Covid-19 received prompt high quality care without a child dying from Covid-19 and with no staff member acquiring infection from a patient. Despite the challenges of Covid-19, the PICU faculty has been successful academically and professionally. Major awards and academic accomplishments among the division members include important contributions to several national societies and both internal and external collaborations: Christopher Carroll, MD, continues many clinical and translational research activities and collaborations. He is recognized as an international leader and lectures frequently at international conferences about topics including asthma and other respiratory diseases, critical care, and digital media. He continues in leadership 50
ANNUAL ACADEMIC REPORT 2020
roles in major medical organizations including Chest® (the American College of Chest Physicians) Covid Task Force, deputy editor of multimedia for the journal Chest, and chair of the Critical Care NetWork and chair of the program committee of Chest. Dr. Carroll also received a distinguished educator award from Chest, the Presidential Citation from the Society of Critical Care Medicine, and Hartford Business Journal’s 2020 Health Care Hero Award. Adam Silverman, MD, as director of the Center for Global Health (CGH), leads efforts to increase appreciation for diversity, equity and inclusion amongst learners, staff and faculty at Connecticut Children’s while leveraging the skills and talents of our institution to improve the health of children living in resourcelimited settings. Despite travel restrictions created by the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Silverman partnered remotely with pediatric providers in Haiti and Rwanda and assisted in the education of future pediatricians and with quality improvement activities in countries with some of the most compelling health care inequalities. He continues to organize an annual Global Health Symposium and the Global Health Film Festival. Locally, he has collaborated with other faculty to further refine and improve the Global Health Care Pathway for pediatric residents, organized a Global Health Boot Camp and mentored staff members who travel to developing countries to help improve the health care of children around the world. Heather Schlott, MD, continues as medical director of the hospital’s Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) program. This technology provides state-ofthe-art heart and lung support for our most critically ill patients. The program has grown and, in fact, Connecticut Children’s received a Silver Award from the national Extracorporeal Life Support Organization for excellent outcomes. The award spans 2018 through 2021. Dr. Schlott also leads the continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) program. This collaboration with Neonatology, Nephrology, Hepatology, and Pediatric Surgery continues its efforts to expand the services available to a growing population of neonates and infants that might benefit from CRRT. Lastly, Dr. Schlott continues as a champion of
sepsis care, including acting as the clinical expert for Connecticut Children’s in the Children’s Hospital Association’s “Improving Pediatric Sepsis Outcomes” Collaborative, which has achieved a 30 percent increase in timely sepsis recognition, a 6 percent decrease in hospital days per sepsis episode, and a 19 percent decrease in sepsis mortality. Kenneth Banasiak, MD, continues to lead as the medical director of cardiac critical care with a multidisciplinary collaboration with Cardiology and Cardiothoracic Surgery to standardize the care of postoperative patients, resulting in improved inter-service communications, patient safety, staff competency, and patient outcomes. Our benchmarked cardiac surgery outcomes are superb and either exceed or match that of larger cardiac intensive care programs. Dr. Banasiak also created and implemented a continuing education curriculum on “Applied Critical Care Physiology,” which focuses primarily on the education of residents who intend to go on to careers in acute care subspecialties. He is revamping this program to provide this education virtually, which will allow for expansion beyond Connecticut Children’s.
