Nature for Healing | Children’s Hospital at London Health Sciences Centre

There’s growing evidence that connecting with nature can ease patients’ fear, pain, and stress while promoting mental health. The Nature for Healing program encourages care providers to promote time in nature as a complement to other forms of care, even inviting physicians to “prescribe” exposure to nature. Meanwhile, donor support is helping the hospital add natural elements indoors and out — ensuring that every patient on the campus has safe, comfortable ways to access nature and its healing effects.

Meanwhile, across Canada:

• Researchers at CHEO studied the prevalence of screen time and inactivity among children and youth across Canada, paying particular attention to the risk factors associated with excessive screen time and insufficient outdoor time.
• Children’s hospitals are increasingly incorporating mental health elements into all the care they deliver — from providing counselling to teenagers living with chronic illness to conducting self-harm screening tests on patients who present in emergency rooms with physical injuries.
• The BC Children’s Hospital’s Child and Youth Therapeutic Services Team, which provides art and music therapy and other enriching experiences, connected with kids and families more than 45,000 times. Children’s hospitals in our network use art and play to help young patients heal, express themselves, and just be kids.

Undesignated funds are empowering children’s hospitals to engage and support the whole child – and their family – while continuing to deliver excellent treatment and care for the medical concerns that brought them to the hospital.

Multicultural Clinic | Montreal Children’s Hospital

This clinic provides tailored support to children who have arrived in Canada in the previous 12 to 18 months: immigrants, refugees, and kids adopted from another country. Donor support helps fund a Patient Navigator, a position designed to help families connect with resources and referrals. For example, some children and youth who arrive from war zones or refugee camps receive referrals to a social worker or mental health professional who can help them process their past experience and navigate the challenges of adjusting to a new country.

Meanwhile, across Canada:

• Instead of delivering set meals on a rigid schedule, CHU Sainte-Justine now provides “room service” that lets patients choose what and when they eat – flexibility that’s friendlier to patients’ diverse dietary needs and tastes. Patient satisfaction soared from 50% to 99% after the change, food waste plummeted, and the hospital’s cost per meal declined.
• Children’s hospitals offer translation services in dozens of languages to ensure that patients and families undergoing treatment can communicate effectively with care teams.

Donor funds help hospitals respond to Canada’s growing diversity, meeting patients’ and families’ need for dignity and understanding as well as excellent clinical care.

Simulation Program | Stollery Children’s Hospital

Many children return home from hospital with medical interventions that need ongoing management, such as “g tubes,” which send nourishment directly into a child’s belly. A specialized facility at the Stollery uses advanced simulation equipment to help parents and caregivers learn the techniques they’ll need, building skill on high-tech mannequins without fear of hurting their child. Hospital staff also use the simulation lab to practice specific techniques in a safe environment – on a “patient” who (as one sim lab consultant puts it) lets instructors “hit the power button and reset.”

Meanwhile, across Canada:

• Donor support is helping to power the Canadian Pediatric Imaging Platform (C-PIP), a shared resource that uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to understand how young brains typically develop – and how disruptions such as concussions and illness may affect them.
• Scientists associated with children’s hospitals continue to build knowledge for better treatment of childhood diseases. From the Biology of Breathing Study focused on childhood asthma (Health Sciences Centre Winnipeg), to research into the effects of combination chemotherapy on childhood cancers (Janeway Children’s Health and Rehabilitation Centre), donor support is driving advances in research and care.

Donor support helps hospitals gain access to leading-edge tools, explore the vast potential of innovations like AI and robotics, and advance the quest for new treatments and cures.