Hundreds of medical professionals and consumers have been introduced to a novel model of care through a conference on family-centered care at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford.

Family-centered care is a fresh approach that involves families as active partners in every aspect of care -- from assisting in the medical management of the patient during hospitalization to sitting on committees that help set hospital policies.

The recent conference drew more than 300 physicians, nurses and staff from throughout the hospital as well as a few parents of children with chronic illnesses. The eight-hour conference, offered on five different days in January and February to allow for greater participation, is the latest in a series of family-centered care initiatives embraced by Packard Children's Hospital in recent years.

For example, a Family Advisory Council -- comprising parents of current and former patients at Packard -- has met regularly for nearly four years to identify ways of better integrating the family perspective into the care delivered at Packard.

In another initiative, trained parent mentors at the hospital and other locations -- in San Francisco, Oakland, Fresno, Sacramento, Portland, Seattle and Honolulu -- help conduct a six-hour session that prepares children and their families for organ transplantation. The parent mentors, who have been through transplantation themselves, cover everything from spirituality and insurance issues to post-surgical compliance.

"This is a major change from the expert model, which is hierarchical in design, to one in which we open up our processes to the very people we serve," said Joan Forte, RN, patient care manager in the intermediate intensive care nursery at Packard and coordinator of the family-centered care conference.

Karen Wayman, MA, director of Packard's Family-Centered Care Project for transplantation families, agrees. "It used to be assumed that families had to conform to the medical culture," she said. "Family-centered care changes that. It's a process in which the medical culture and the family culture learn from each other and, as a result, form more productive partnerships."

The commitment to family-centered care continues to grow at Packard for good reason -- increasing evidence that it works.

"New research has shown that the relationship between the parents, and between the parents and the newborn, is the most significant variable affecting outcomes for the baby," Forte noted.

"With transplants, family-centered care doesn't affect the surgery per se. But it's likely that this approach reduces the trauma of transplantation," added Wayman, who is completing a research study on how family-centered care affects parental stress, family cohesiveness and family management of the child's medical regimen.

"Transplantation can result in a high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder," she continued. "I'm interested in investigating whether family-centered care reduces these emotional repercussions and reduces the cost of care for stress-related ailments."

The hospital's recent conference was funded by a gift from a San Jose couple whose daughter was born prematurely at Packard. Although the child spent most of her early life in the hospital, she is now a healthy 3 year old. SR