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A pediatric intensive care unit can be a forbidding place for children and their families. Oftentimes, critically ill children are separated from their parents due to lack of space, adequate facilities and privacy. Food Lion, through a one-million-dollar gift to the VCU Health System’s PICU, has made the hospital a little more like home, greatly easing the suffering of both children and parents. Research shows that children have an improved recovery rate when parents and family are near, providing comfort, reassurance and love. While the day-to-day changes of medical treatment and personnel may seem frightening to a child, family-centered hospital care encourages family involvement as a reliable constant during a child’s stay. Thanks to Food Lion’s generosity, the VCU Health System PICU, now named the Food Lion Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, is among the first of its kind in the nation to cater specifically to families and the emotional needs of patients.
Fully equipped with the latest instrumentation and life support techniques, the Food Lion PICU is a Level-1, 12-bed critical care area, staffed for the care of critically ill children, including heart surgery patients, liver transplant patients, and head injury patients. In addition to admissions from the emergency room, pediatric floors, and operating rooms, the Food Lion PICU is a referral site for hospitals in the Richmond area and regional hospitals from Fredericksburg to Virginia’s southern border.
The $2.3 million dollar renovation to the PICU allows parents and families to have a much more active role in treating patients. The Food Lion PICU offers families more privacy with sleep-over rooms and a kitchen. Renovations have created a total of 14 private rooms with glass walls to permit viewing from the nurses’ station while also providing privacy for patients and their families. Each room is equipped with storage, a sleeper sofa for parents, and space for staff. In addition, the rooms are designed so that medical equipment and monitors will be out of sight of the child, making the atmosphere much less threatening. Family areas have also been added in each patient’s room, as well as a family center where parents can relax and consult in private with physicians, and a kitchen where parents can prepare a child’s favorite foods.
First established as a four-bed unit in 1978, the PICU is celebrating 25 years of service to the most critically ill children in the Greater Richmond area and averages 950 admissions a year, making it one of the busiest in the state. More than 200 children are transferred to the Food Lion PICU each year from other Virginia hospitals, and the average length of stay is four days, with some patients having to spend as much as four months there.
The VCU Health System provided $1.3 million in matching funds after Food Lion donated $1 million through the Children’s Miracle Network.
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