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FeedCaring For Kids
WVU Children’s Hospital is a bright spot on some dark days for families in West Virginia and beyond.
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When you step off the elevators onto the sixth floor of Ruby Memorial Hospital, you might think you’re in a children’s museum or playhouse, what with the yellow walls, fish tank, fountain, and PlayStations. But through the double doors to either side, many children—minutes old through adolescence—are fighting for their lives.
More than 7,000 children and their mothers are cared for at WVU’s Children’s Hospital each year, and more than 120,000 outpatient visits are made annually. Of 1,500 births every year, more than 70 percent are high-risk.
The capacity in all areas of the Children’s Hospital is high, as kids from all over West Virginia and bordering states travel to Morgantown for the best in care. “Everything that you could think of for an adult, the little ones can have it, too,” says Cheryl Jones, director of the Children’s Hospital. “Everything from brain tumors to congenital anomalies, we see it.” It is the only hospital in the state that is a Children’s Miracle Network hospital (one of 170 nationwide), which greatly helps the not-for-profit receive funds through local donations. The hospital turns no one away—insured or not.
Whether children are in critical condition or have the flu, the Children’s Hospital cares for them and tries to make their stays as fun as possible so kids won’t fear doctors when they leave. That mission is evident all over the walls and ceilings—from the safari-themed, 28-bed general pediatric unit to the land and sea-themed, 19-bed PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) to the birthday party-themed, 40-bed NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). When children are well enough, they can play in the activity center—a large room for all ages with indoor and outdoor areas, posters of Twilight and Justin Bieber, and that overall feeling that you’ve just stepped into a young person’s bedroom. They can choose from just about every board game imaginable, play Rock Band or foosball, make a craft, read, or just watch TV.
Back in the general pediatrics unit, young patients are encouraged to make their hospital rooms their own. Whenever the kids have to undergo minor, but painful procedures—a new IV started or a cast changed—they are taken from their rooms to a colorful procedure room, full of toys and stickers, but different from the space that’s become their own. “We want them to feel like when they’re in their bedroom, that it’s a safe place,” Jones says.
In the PICU, most children are critically ill, whether undergoing neurosurgery or recovering from an ATV or skiing accident. There are cots in every room so family can spend the night. Dr. Robert Gustafson, a Keyser native, spends a lot of time in the PICU, and the surgeon-in-chief of the Children’s Hospital is also the only pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon in the state. An average 180 pediatric heart surgeries are performed at the Children’s Hospital each year—if a baby is born in Charleston and needs heart surgery, more than likely, the family is transferred to Morgantown. Gustafson operates five days a week with a team of highly-trained pediatric specialists—some of whom have been with him for more than a decade. “It’s a core group of people who have been with me for a long time. They don’t miss a beat.” He says he’d match the people working at WVU Children’s Hospital with any group in Pittsburgh. “The difference between going to Pittsburgh Children’s or Philadelphia, where you’re going to an $800 million freestanding children’s hospital versus coming here is, in many ways, the people. You get more individual attention here. Your child gets more individual attention.”
But the Children’s Hospital hasn’t always been around. After returning from his fellowship in pediatric cardiac surgery at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Boston, Gustafson, colleagues, and mentors had to build the “hospital within a hospital” themselves. What started with just two ICU beds grew to four, then to seven, then to 21. When the new Ruby Memorial Hospital was designed in the ’80s, planners decided to make a children’s hospital within the hospital—putting all of the children and mothers on the same floor. Growth has continued, and the hospital is now in the process of adding more NICU beds and general pediatric beds in the next several years.
Providing access to pediatric specialties like neurosurgery and cardiology is vitally important to keeping West Virginians from having to travel to Cleveland or even Boston. “We have almost all the subspecialties in pediatrics covered now. It’s quite fulfilling, considering 27 years ago, when I came back, we didn’t have a children’s hospital,” Gustafson says.
