ERAD - Friends of Emergency Medicine Department
When a child enters MALRAD (Emergency Medicine Center) of the Schneider Children's Hospital, he arrives at a department that does everything possible so that he does not have to be hospitalized unnecessarily and so that he receives full treatment based on tests that are performed there immediately. Just like him, his relatives accompanying him will receive all the answers they need in order to return home calm with a child who has been treated, or with recommendations for the continuation of the treatment and the follow-up they need. To reach this situation where the emergency room functions not only as an emergency room for resuscitation and urgent treatments, but also as a pediatric emergency department for everything, it took years of learning the situation in the field and understanding the needs of such a department in terms of equipment and professional knowledge in order to find a budgetary and logistical solution for them. This is the role of ERAD, the Association of friends of MALRAD Schneider.
Necessity is the father of invention and excellence
- Schneider hospital
The association of friends of MALRAD (Schneider hospital's emergency care department) was formed gradually about twenty years ago, out of the need created in the field both for advanced and innovative equipment and for a unique activity of volunteers for the benefit of the children and their families. The stated goal is to make the best use of the department's potential to provide all medical services under one roof, in order to release the children home as soon as possible instead of unnecessary hospitalization. The medical staff and ERAD volunteers came to the understanding that the more procedures they perform in the MALRAD itself, the less time and resources they will waste in sending the children and the sanitary workers to laboratories and other departments. The conclusion was that advanced medical equipment should be introduced to MALRAD which would allow diagnose and treat children quickly and efficiently even if it was not customary to bring such equipment into the emergency room until then.
ERAD has begun raising dedicated funds for such advanced medical equipment that will allow the faculty to carry out independent activities in the MALRAD itself, such as a rapid device for blood tests, portable ultrasound, defibrillator monitors with external pacemakers, a monitoring system that includes EKG, computerized with artificial intelligence, portable computers for disease summaries and more. It is this activity that made the Schneider Medical Center an outstanding one of its kind and which can accept and treat more than 58,000 children a year from the age of 0-18, when only one out of six continues to be hospitalized at the Schneider Center and all the rest of the patients at the medical center are discharged.
Equipment and activities added to the MALRAD thanks to ERAD
In addition to logistics, ERAD also invests in the fields of knowledge of the doctors and staff and sends them to conferences, continuing education and professional training. ERAD volunteers work in close cooperation with the MALRAD staff, learning from them about their unique needs both in terms of equipment and in expanding their professional knowledge and training, and work to purchase advanced and innovative equipment that will allow doctors to quickly diagnose, heal and save lives when necessary.
The types of equipment and training are intended to serve both the immediate medical needs and to take care of the well-being of the children and parents while waiting.:
• Manual ultrasound. A device that enables immediate scanning of the child and diagnosis of the exact problem while saving time.
• A device for testing blood gases located in the resuscitation room and saves a lot of time instead of sending tests to the laboratory.
• Defibrillators with external pacemakers.
• Blood heating device in the resuscitation room.
• Fixed and mobile monitors for transferring the children to the various departments for tests outside the MALRAD.
• Use of laughing gas to facilitate the treatment of children.
• Equipment and methods for pain management.
• Infusion pumps.
• Trainings for doctors and emergency pediatrics conferences in Israel and around the world.
• An advanced device for intubation training for the medical staff.
• Training for nurses in complementary medicine methods intended for both children and their parents, such as Reiki and biofeedback, breathing training and more.
• Equipment for the well-being of the parents and children waiting for their turn: a simulator, a large aquarium that calms the children and keeps them busy, play cards, gifts and book.
Volunteer activity -
Help is the goal, not the means
The volunteers in MALRAD work to identify any need they can respond to, according to the staff's instructions or by themselves, according to the situation in the field, in order to ease the burden imposed on the staff members and to improve the atmosphere and the emotional state of the children and their family members. The volunteers serve as liaisons also between the staff members and the patients and try to help them as much as possible in everything that is required, including assignments and errands in medical matters.
The well-being of the patients and their attendants also includes providing equipment such as sheets and blankets, bringing food to those who have been waiting for hospitalization for hours, accompanying the family to relevant departments at Schneider for hospitalization or performing a test, bringing the blood samples to the laboratory themselves, focusing on those waiting for their turn after the admission procedure and before the test to make sure that there is no deterioration in their condition and improving their feeling that they are receiving the full attention they deserve.
When necessary, they also move between the patients' beds and support the children and parents as much as possible and even help them sometimes when they replace the parents for a short time in looking after the child. The help in the trauma room is the most complex of all, and the volunteers help the staff, parents and children cope with the injury and help with the treatment. The volunteers learn in the MALRAD over time where they are needed and how they can help both the faculty and the patients and their attendants. This is an interesting and challenging activity that fills with great satisfaction, especially when seeing the children and their parents often leave the MALRAD with a smile and after optimal care.
