Melanie Cole, MS (Host): Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital holds an Emergency Department Approved for Pediatrics or EDAP Certification from Los Angeles County. Emergency departments that are EDAP certified, provide care to pediatric patients by meeting specific requirements for professional staff, quality improvement, education, support services, equipment, supplies, medications, and established policies, procedures, and protocols.

Henry Mayo has held an EDAP certification since 1985, which means the hospital has been caring for Santa Clarita Valley kids in its emergency department for nearly 20 years. The hospital treats approximately a thousand children in its emergency department every month.

Welcome to It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole and joining me today is Heidi Ruff. She's a Registered Nurse and a Pediatric Nurse Coordinator at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Heidi, thank you so much for joining us today. I'd like you to start by telling the listeners, what is an EDAP certification? What does that really mean?

Heidi Ruff, RN: Good morning, Melanie, and thank you for having me here this morning. LA County comes out and designates hospitals in the County of Los Angeles for specialty centers and pediatric or EDAP is one of the specialty centers in LA County. Like you already said, we've been designated here at Henry Mayo since 1985, and it means that we go through rigorous training and education and the program gets highly scrutinized by the county of Los Angeles to make sure that we're ready to take care of the kids in our area.

Host: Well, it's certainly a comprehensive and impressive certification. And as I mentioned in my intro, it also covers established policies, procedures, protocols, all of these things that are so important to both the staff and patients. Why do you think it's important that Henry Mayo have this certification?

Heidi Ruff, RN: Henry Mayo is geographically located in a very high volume family area. We're also geographically located to some very impressive pediatric hospitals in Los Angeles. So, it's important for us to be an EDAP out here so that we can take care of our community and take care of the everyday needs of our pediatric patients.

When things go beyond what our capabilities are, then we have this robust system within L.A. County, that we can reach out to, to help take care of either sicker or more injured children. But on the day to day basis, we can definitely take care of the children in our community and their medical and traumatic needs. So it's very important. Being a community hospital, with pediatric resources is huge for taking care of all of the children in any community. I would say that Henry Mayo is very similar to the rest of the country in that most children are actually taken care of in community hospitals.

They don't generally go to pediatric specific hospitals from the beginning. So we are taking good care of the kids in our community.

Host: What does the hospital have to do to maintain its certification? I would feel that this is really the hardest part is really keeping these things up on tab.

Heidi Ruff, RN: Absolutely. Any certification in any hospital is usually a lot of work, and it means that the hospital is committed to that certification or to the requirements put out by the certifying body. So, it takes a lot of work to be certified for literally any certification in a facility. Pediatrics specifically, we're very robust in education, pediatric specific equipment, which for a facility like Henry Mayo or other community hospitals, you don't always have little sizes and things, pediatric sizes. You generally would have adult sizes. So you're very specific in the types of equipment, types of education, the people who have to be educated, the people you have on staff. Those are all part of the requirements for our specialty center of EDAP.

Host: What are some of the most common childhood conditions that you see in the emergency department at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital? Because Heidi, you mentioned how many kids that you see and how important it is that this certification is because pediatric specific, you know, parents we're all nuts and the emergency department is a very scary place for parents. And yet, life saving and so important. What do you see most often?

Heidi Ruff, RN: Well, first of all, we are all nuts as parents and emergency departments are scary places for us and our little people. I would say our number one chief complaint of what the parents bringing a child in for is usually fever, or viral illnesses. So it could be upper respiratory or gastrointestinal. We do see a fair number of minor trauma. Head injuries, extremity injuries. So that's really our top few chief complaints of what we see here at Henry Mayo for our pediatric population.

Host: So then where do your pediatricians fit into this scenario?

Heidi Ruff, RN: Pediatricians are out in the community and they see our pediatric patients at their offices and in the community setting. The emergency room physicians are who would see the pediatric patients when you present to the emergency department.

Host: Pediatricians are just the gold standard. They are just the ones that help us raise our kids happy and healthy and safe, and that's really what it's all about. What would you like, Heidi, parents to know about Henry Mayo's emergency department? What to bring with them? What you want them to know when they do have to come to the emergency room?

Heidi Ruff, RN: I would like the people of Santa Clarita to A, realize how many children we do see through our emergency department every single month and that we take really good care of our kids through Henry Mayo Emergency Department. When you decide to come to the emergency department, sometimes you don't have time to plan.

Sometimes it is emergent and that's fine. You don't come with anything with you. But there are times that you have a few minutes where you could collect a few things. It's always good to bring some activities for your child to do while they're here. Obviously iPhones, iPads have become the gold standard of what children look at all the time to pass some time. It's not my favorite as a pediatric nurse. So I would say bring coloring books, bring books, bring things for them to do, because when you go to any emergency department, you could be there for hours. It's just how the system is set up. So bring things for them to do. Socks to keep their little feet warm, a little sweatshirt, because we all know hospitals can be cold.

So if you have time to pack a little bag or bring a few things, that's great. If not, we're usually pretty sufficient in taking care of your kids and having extra stuff around. But those are just a few suggestions when you come to visit us.

Host: Do you have any final thoughts about EDAP and what you'd like the community to understand about this very important certification?

Heidi Ruff, RN: I would like our community to realize that we have a very robust system here for our pediatric patients. Oftentimes what happens is we don't usually admit our pediatric patients here at Henry Mayo. If you meet the admission criteria, you're often transferred. But, like you already said, we see a thousand children every month and we transfer maybe 30 to 40 of those children. So the vast majority of our pediatric population is seen and discharged directly from our emergency department. So we're here and we're ready to take care of the kiddos in our community.

And I feel we do a really good job at that and being designated since 1985 and being redesignated just this year, shows what a great job we do at taking care of our pediatric population.

Host: It certainly does. Thank you so much, Heidi, for joining us today. And you can learn more about Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital and all the services that they provide by visiting henrymayo.com. You can also visit the free health information library at library.henrymayo.com. There's so much great information there. And it's free. Did I mention that? That concludes this episode of It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Please always remember to subscribe, rate, and review It's Your Health Radio on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and Pandora. I'm Melanie Cole. Until next time, thanks so much for joining us today.