Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital (LPCH) at Stanford in Palo Alto, California, internationally recognized for pediatric and obstetric care, provides a wide range of services for babies, children, adolescents, expectant mothers and now CPR Anytime discharge training. Long recognized for both its achievements and commitment to highly specialized care, Lucille Packard now provides CPR training to over 2,500 high risk patients each year.
Two years ago, Lynda Knight, Clinical Life Support and Resuscitation Educator at the Center for Nursing Excellence at LPCH, began investigating alternative training methods for teaching CPR skills to families at discharge, to better serve hospital and patient needs. After seeing the Family and Friends CPR Anytime self-directed learning program as an American Heart Association ECC Committee member, Ms. Knight initiated a study to measure the effectiveness of this type of training for high risk patients. “The motivation behind the observational study was the initial hope and goal that Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital would standardize and set precedent in providing the life saving skills of CPR to our parents of high-risk infants and children", said Ms. Knight. This effort was supported by providing these parents with the American Heart Association “CPR Anytime Kit” at no additional charge to the families at discharge. Ms. Knight added, "My dream is that all Children’s Hospitals, across the nation, will follow in the footsteps paved by LPCH, by implementing this standardized, highly innovative and effective method of providing CPR training to their families as well.”
Data was presented to the hospital board for evaluation of the CPR Anytime program as it compared to current hospital training methods. After reviewing the data presented, the hospital board decided to fully endorse CPR Anytime as the preferred training method for all high risk patients. Their evaluation and review confirmed that by using the CPR Anytime program LPCH could offer an effective training program without the logistical issues and resource management challenges faced previously with traditional methods.
Overcoming objections from internal hospital staff was also a challenge addressed by the study. The study confirmed that parents “felt more comfortable with the CPR Anytime training and were not afraid to administer CPR if needed”, a concern previously expressed by some hospital physicians. Admission and discharge protocols now mandate that no other CPR training is offered at Lucille Packard other than CPR Anytime.
Training begins at admission and kits are distributed to new moms and patients at risk with remediation provided by staff nurses as necessary. The decision to determine who gets a kit to take home is made by the patient’s physician, RN’s or RCP’s, but requires a physician order to distribute the kit. While in these economic times, funding this type of program for all patients can be a continuous challenge for hospitals, Lucille Packard will be supplementing their new parent training programs by offering the CPR Anytime learning kits for purchase through their hospital gift shop, making CPR training available to extended family members as well.
In an ongoing effort to their community, Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital has made Patient Safety Month a focus for the month of June and CPR Anytime was a featured product. CPR Anytime Kits were also offered throughout the month to staff and their families.
