Hearst Fund Enhances Children’s Educational Outreach
from Caring For Our Future, Fall 2004
Using a $200,000 grant received in 2002, The Children’s Hospital has enhanced its capacity to provide professional education throughout the region.
The William Randolph Hearst Foundation grant in 2002 established The William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Perinatal and Pediatric Outreach Programs. In 2004, the Hearst Endowed Fund generated approximately $10,000 in annual spendable income. The beneficiaries of these proceeds included TCH nursing conferences and conference participants who applied for scholarship assistance.
For the first time, the 20th Annual Community and School Health/Pediatric Telephone Triage Conference, held June 10 and June 11, was teleconferenced to five sites in Colorado and Wyoming, bringing valuable information to 40 people who couldn’t attend the “live” sold-out conference held at Children’s. New relationships were formed, and excellent feedback was received to continue the partnerships through teleconferencing.
The Children’s Hospital serves a huge area, including all of Colorado and parts of Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska and Utah. The Outreach Education program logically grew out of the concept of “regionalization,” instituted in the mid-1960s by the late L. Joseph Butterfield, MD, and at the start, focused solely on perinatal programs. By the early 1990s, the program expanded to include pediatric health-care education. The goal continues to be one of providing perinatal and pediatric programs that focus on assessment, stabilization, transport and ongoing care that are geographically accessible to health-care professionals from community hospitals, clinics, community health agencies and schools throughout the region.
Through these education programs, Children’s can enhance pregnancy and pediatric outcomes by providing resources and improving practice procedures, knowledge and skill levels. Earlier recognition and intervention can reduce or eliminate poor outcomes, and thus reduce the pain, suffering and enormous economic costs associated with complications of pregnancy and pediatric illness and disease.
Many hospitals have eliminated or cut educational programs and budgets and do not always include funds for tuition and travel expenses. Many providers depend on current perinatal and pediatric information from The Children’s Hospital to successfully care for their patients. For high-risk pregnant women, newborns and sick children, short-term care provided in community hospitals is as important to a healthy outcome as intensive care provided in regional centers.
In 1980, Susan Clarke, MS, RNC, clinical nurse specialist in Education Services, joined Children’s as coordinator of the Perinatal Outreach Education Program. For the past 13 years, she has directed both perinatal and pediatric nursing outreach programs and the nursing clock hour program. Clarke first applied for Hearst Foundation funds in the early 1990s. Prior to receiving the endowment, over a 10-year period (1991-2001) the program, largely supported by Hearst Foundation funding, provided 124 educational offerings, including 61 conferences, reaching almost 6,400 individuals.
“I am ecstatic to know that the annual earnings from the endowment will be used in perpetuity to help continue Children’s nursing outreach efforts and incorporate new programs as the need arises,” Clarke said. “This endowment will have a lasting impact on Children’s and health providers in our region.”
Housed in the Nursing Education and Education Services departments, Outreach Education encompasses everything from Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP) provider and renewal courses to numerous perinatal and pediatric nursing conferences, clinical nursing traineeships and the Perinatal Continuing Education Program (PCEP), a 40-week, community-based, self-study perinatal program.
Central to the success of Outreach Education is the “train the trainer” model.
“The individuals who participate in Outreach Education programs, such as the PCEP, return to their home institutions and assist their staff with the knowledge and skills they gained at Children’s and through the PCEP,” Clarke said.
“We are so pleased that The Children’s Hospital considers us a partner in its multiple good works for children and families in the Rocky Mountain/Great Plains region,” said Thomas Eastman, western director of the Hearst Foundation. “This grant of $200,000 to establish The Hearst Perinatal and Pediatric Outreach Endowment is a vote of confidence in the work that you currently do – and in the many good works to come.”
The Foundation assists institutions in providing opportunities to underserved and under-represented populations in the areas of education, health, social service and culture.
Clarke said, “The ongoing partnership among so many at Children’s, The Hearst Foundation and health-care providers throughout the region will certainly benefit children and their families in the years to come.”
