Our Comfort Policy
At Covenant Children’s, we strive to promote your child’s physical
and emotional comfort throughout their hospital experience. In 2018, Covenant
Children's created a Comfort Committe that, in early 2019, created
a pediatric Comfort Policy - the first hospital in the region to have
such a policy - outlining the steps we take to decrease fear while minimizing
pain and discomfort. This Comfort Policy is an extension of our Patient
and Family Centered philosophy to care.
Essential Components
- In collaboration with the family and child’s team, we establish an
individualized comfort care plan based upon an assessment
- We empower family caregivers to nurture and support their child during
procedures
- We provide developmentally-based patient/family preparation and education
Comfort Care Plan
- We utilize a combination of evidence-based strategies based upon your child’s
age, sensory sensitivities, and assessment
-
These strategies may include a combination of the following:
-
Use of comfort positions*
- Distraction and coping interventions
- Sucrose and breast feeding for infants
- Topical numbing agents
- Pharmacologic approaches or sedation, as indicated (e.g. younger children,
children with developmental disabilities, etc. may require some level
of pharmacologic intervention or secdation)