Children's Hospitals Today - Spring 2018 - 29

VITALS / 5 MINUTES WITH...

Facilities expert Chet Howard
WEBINAR
RESOURCES FOR
BEHAVIORAL HEALTH
Children's hospitals are
seeing a growing number
of children with behavioral
health needs, putting
pressure on facilities that
may not be equipped to
care adequately for these
patients. A new behavioral
health webinar series
focuses on the inside of
children's hospitals, with
peers sharing operational
approaches for improving
care management, facility
design and staff capabilities.
The series kicked off with
Behavioral Health: Making
Rooms Safer through Facility
Design. Access this webinar
on-demand to hear how two
children's hospitals met CMS
guidelines by creating safer
ED and inpatient rooms. And
stay tuned throughout 2018
for webinars on topics like
managing behavioral health
patients in the ED, training
staff for combative patients,
and managing care within
the community.

For additional resources
and to learn more about the
behavioral health series,
visit childrenshospitals.org/
behavioralhealth.

Howard discusses room design strategies to keep behavioral
health patients and caregivers safe.

any children's hospitals report an
average of two to three emergency
department (ED) visits a day from patients
presenting with a behavioral health issue.
Making the hospital safer for patients and
providers is taking on a new importance.
Chet Howard, CHFM, facilities operations
director at Arkansas Children's Hospital
in Little Rock, discusses how hospitals can
minimize risk for pediatric patients and
staff members.
What is the one thing hospitals need to
know about this topic? General medical/
surgical inpatient settings do not need to
meet the same standards as inpatient psychiatric centers to be a ligature-resistant
environment. Patients with behavioral
health-related issues who are admitted to
medical/surgical facilities require specialized medical equipment to treat their medical condition, so not all ligature risks can
be removed. The idea is to assess and identify the patient's risk of self or staff harm
and remove or mitigate as many of those
risks as possible.
Why do hospitals need to make rooms
safer? Hospitals across the country have
seen an increase in patients with behavioral
health-related issues. This includes hospitals that do not have a dedicated behavioral
health inpatient facilities and staff. This
vulnerable population of patients may need
additional measures to keep them safe while
they are in our care. Suicide is now the 10th
leading cause of death in the United States.
While the vast majority occurs outside of
health care facilities, many still occur within health care facilities every year. Safer
rooms, along with training, are important
to keep our caregivers safe, too.

What steps did Arkansas Children's take
to create safer rooms? Arkansas Children's
recently renovated two inpatient bed
spaces designed specifically for general
medical/surgical inpatients who also have
behavioral health-related issues. These
rooms are not intended to be full psychiatric care rooms but are designed to be
"safer" rooms where ligature points and
other risks of harm have been removed or
mitigated to the extent possible.
Some of the features include doors that
open into the corridor, ligature alarms on
doors, bathrooms that don't lock, ligatureresistant plumbing fixtures, protected
medical gas and electrical outlet systems,
tamper resistant sprinklers and HVAC
vents, 1-to-1 monitoring windows for nursing staff, exterior lighting and water controls, and more. We also have two "safer"
exam rooms in our emergency department
with similar features.

CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL S TODAY Spring 2018

http://www.childrenshospitals.org/behavioralhealth http://www.childrenshospitals.org/behavioralhealth

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