Warm welcome in Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital in Rome
Through the constant analysis of the needs of families, Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital in Rome has emphasized the importance of building a Family Service organization that is careful to protect the patient and his family from the traumatic effects of hospital admission.
Context
According to Lucia Celesti:
Bewilderment is the dominant sensation for those who have to face with an admission to a hospital, especially if that hospital is far away from home, even worse if the patient is your child and you, the parent, should be a landmark for him. Instead, you don’t know what to do, just feel lost among the information, wards, comings and goings of patients and white coats. (…)
My professional experience as a doctor has increasingly convinced me that family care is a necessary part of treatment. Giving the sensation of being cared for enables the family to focus on the only thing that matters: their child’s health. When I graduated, there was a real dichotomy between healthcare providers, or rather doctors and nurses, and parents. I am sure, instead, that this separation is senseless, and that the parents’ presence in helping and aiding their child’s therapeutic path must be integrated. My great-grandfather, a pediatrician, used to assert that the main doctor is the mother: I believe he was right. (…)
In Italy, however, very few hospitals are organized with Family Services. I describe the way we built an ‘accoglienza’ department dedicated to softening the traumatic experience on the patient and his relatives after their entrance in the hospital.