Friday 12th April - Temple St Children's Hospital grand rounds

This Children's Hospital is over 150 years old but is on a journey to build a new Childrens hospital in Dublin where they will amalgamate services with Crumlin St Children's. What they lacked in space, they made up for with a friendly welcoming atmosphere. Everyone seemed to know Prof Alf Nicholson as we went around and he even introduced us to the porter. The ED was busy but most of the outpatient clinics were completed by late morning as we came by. As we were approaching Easter, the school staff had the afternoon off so I didn't get to see their education program.

I had been invited to present at grand rounds and prepared a talk that included a couple of videos. Not surprisingly, the hosptial computer didn't work with the videos and couldn't connect to my laptop. The system was down and they couldnt even get to the Monash Childrens website! Nonetheless, all went well as I had anticipated this may happen.

So many probelms we face are universal across the world. The concerns about "MET call" or "PEWS call" fatigue, and diffiulty knowing whether these calls actually make things safer anyway. My message was around looking to "positive deviance" to learn how to improve and the need to engage with patients and families to really understand how to transform services and improve. I think they really liked the idea of the A&A (Awesome and Amazing rounds) we are running.

After our tour and talk, Serena and I got on the road to Galway earlier than expected. It was to good to get back "home" to Galway and see Fergus and Betty and meet Pixie.

Pixie took a liking to me and snuggled to sleep on my lap as we watched TV after dinner.