Connect Newsletter (March 31, 2023)

What's the Latest on the Burnout Survey? 

More than 4,000 of you participated in our 2022 system wide Maslach Burnout Survey. Thank you so much! The information you shared about your work experience is allowing us to better see the world through your eyes. We’re now identifying and prioritizing opportunities to help improve the team experience for everyone in our health care system. Here's an update on how we are sharing survey results and steps we’re taking to act on what we learned.   

New Dodson Specialty Clinics P1 Garage: ‘I’m Impressed. It Looks Beautiful.'

We want you to be the first to see a new video produced with our patient families in mind.  Please take less than 4 minutes of your day to watch this video that provides information on parking in our new P1 Garage for Dodson Specialty Clinics patient families.

Get Convenient Access with Workday Mobile App

Employees can stay up-to-date anywhere, anytime, using the mobile app from Workday after Cook Children’s switches to the new platform this summer. This will be especially convenient for employees whose work doesn’t take place at a desk. Workday is a cloud-based software that specializes in functions for Finance, Supply Chain and Human Resources. Whatever you do now in Lawson, you’ll be doing on Workday. Details on how we’ll be able to access Workday on-the-go here.

Slippery, Gooey Fun: Slime-A-Doc 2023

In honor of National Doctors Day on March 30, our patients got the chance to pour slime all over lucky Cook Children’s employees. It was the eighth annual Slime-A-Doc and we streamed it all live on Facebook (re-watch it here).

This year, we had four categories of participants: physicians, nurses, child life specialists and members of the Cook Children’s Health Care System’s leadership team. The nominees competed for votes – from employees, who voted by email, and from the public via social media.  

Here are the lucky winners:

• Child Life Specialist: Miles Cantrell, Child Life Specialist on 3 Main 
• Nurse: Damon Street, BSN, RN, neurosciences
• Leadership: Kevin Greene, vice president and administrator at Cook Children’s Medical Center - Prosper
• Physician: Maria Victoria Talamo Guevara, M.D., pulmonologist 

The photos and video from the event will make you laugh out loud! Check them out here. Also, a big shout-out to Martin Aguado, Facility Appearances Manager, and his hardworking team for making this event possible.

Center for Children’s Health Changes Name

Beyond the walls of Cook Children’s, staff members go out into the community with one goal in mind – to make our North Texas region one of the healthiest places to raise a child. To better reflect the purpose of The Center for Children’s Health, the name has been changed to Cook Children’s Center for Community Health. Read all about this exciting change.

Patient Safety for All Story Contest Winners

We had 15 amazing stories submitted for our 2023 Patient Safety Awareness Week: Safety for All Virtual Storyboard contest. More than 840 voting ballots were submitted. We hope you enjoyed seeing and reading about this incredible work going on around the System. You can continue to view these initiatives on our Patient Safety Awareness Week page. 

These entries received the most votes for their respective categories and their teams are being rewarded. Thank you all for voting and please help us celebrate all of these incredible teams.

Jill Koss Earns Distinguished Service Award

Hard work gets noticed at Cook Children’s, especially when it comes from the heart. But when an outside professional association takes note of one of our own, it’s extra special.

We are so very proud of Jill Koss, MS, Certified Child Life Specialist, Director of Family Support Services, who has earned the 2023 Distinguished Service Award from the Association of Child Life Professionals.  The award, deemed by many in the field to be the pinnacle of a professional career, is an accolade topping Jill’s service to children in North Texas and around the world. Learn more about Jill and Child Life at Cook Children's. 

PrayerBear Turns 25

Did you know that Spiritual Care has provided PrayerBears to all patients as they are admitted as a source of comfort and encouragement? In 2022, volunteers shared 16,955 PrayerBears with Cook Children’s patients. Supported by generous donors, the PrayerBear program is celebrating its 25th birthday and you're all invited to help celebrate on April 12. Learn more here.                         

Pediatric Nurses Speaking at Conference

We are proud that several Cook Children’s nurses will be sharing their expertise at the Society of Pediatric Nursing Professionals' 33rd SPN Annual Conference in Pittsburgh. If you'd like to join them, registration is open for the conference, happening April 26-28, as well as the Virtual Conference Bridge, a one-day virtual event on May 11. Click here to read about the fascinating topics our nurses will be presenting.     

Cook Children’s Hosting Two Conferences

Cook Children’s is hosting two conferences in Fort Worth in April. The 2023 Pediatric Neurosciences Conference: Meeting of the Mind, hosted by the Jane and John Justin Institute for Mind Health at Cook Children’s, is scheduled for April 20-22 at the Hilton Fort Worth. 
Learn more and register here.

Scheduled during National Child Abuse Awareness Month, Cook Children’s is proud to present the Third Biennial Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect. This educational opportunity will help all health care and mental health professionals, school nurses and law enforcement to develop and enhance skills and knowledge in the recognition, assessment and prevention of child abuse. The event is on April 26 in the Hochberger Auditorium at Cook Children’s Medical Center. Details and registration are here.
 

Lace Up for The Blast

It's not too late to participate in The Blast, our annual walk benefiting the Cook Children’s Hematology and Oncology Center. This year we are back at Panther Island Pavilion on Saturday, April 1, with 5K and 1K walk routes. The event opens at 8 a.m. and the walk will begin at 9 a.m. The walk is family-friendly and includes a DJ, team and fundraising awards, food trucks, a Kid Zone with balloon and glitter tattoo artists, an obstacle course, and mobile Build-A-Bear. Your support ensures Cook Children’s patients receive out-of-this-world care, close to home. Online sign-ups are closed. To participate, arrive at 8 a.m. and sign up in person at the check-in tent.

Social Worker of the Year 2023

Celebrate our social workers! Please join us to congratulate this year’s Cook Children’s Social Worker of the Year, Sarah Shepherd, Cook Children’s Health Plan, and all the social workers who were nominated. Sarah is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and has been with Cook Children’s since 2015 as a STAR/CHIP case manager. Find the list of all nominees here.

Cook Children's By-The-Numbers

Did you know that 63,007 visits at Cook Children's involved virtual care last year? Learn this and much more with our handy “By the numbers” information chart. 

Women's History Month: Meet Candace Gamble, M.D. 

This Women's History Month, we have been introducing everyone to women employees who have made a difference at Cook Children's. A geneticist, Candace Gamble, M.D., puts together the pieces of a patient’s genetic puzzle, including medical and family histories and genetic testing results, to identify an underlying disorder. Visit the Women's History Month page on the Connect Newsroom to read all of this month's feature articles. 
 

Celebrating Health Care Access Professionals

Join us in recognizing the more than 170 health care access professionals during Patient Access Week April 2-8, 2023. The Access staff serve as goodwill ambassadors for the organization and play an essential role in the helping our patients feel like family here at Cook Children’s. 

The team includes: Service Representatives who greet patients as they come in, Patient Access Specialists who register patients and collect demographic and insurance information, Financial Counselors who assist and screen families with applying for Medicaid and other benefits, Admission Specialists who assign bed placement to incoming patients, Insurance Specialists who verify insurance benefits by phone, Pre-Registration Specialists who get registration information ahead of appointments and procedures, and more.

Vitality: Wellness Program Update 

We’ll be saying goodbye to Vitality and moving to a new wellness platform called Virgin Pulse beginning this fall. Participants, if you’ve already earned a $50 gift card for completing your Vitality Health Check, Vitality Health Review and reaching Silver status you will be awarded another $50 through the Vitality portal prior to June 20; there‘s no action needed on your part. If you have not met the requirements for the first $50 gift card you have until May 31 to earn the full $100 incentive. All Vitality point earning opportunities will end on May 31. You will be able to redeem your Vitality Bucks until June 20.

Spring Fun: Calling All Volunteers

We’re excited to partner with City of Fort Worth and Tarrant County College (TCC) for this year’s Main St. Fort Worth Arts Festival on April 20-23. This event is free and will be located in downtown Fort Worth. The Cook Children’s booth will be in the Makers Zone sponsored by TCC. We’ll have an art project for kids to do at our very own Cook Children's booth and need lots of volunteers to make this event successful. This is a great way to spend time together with coworkers, represent Cook Children’s, gain volunteer hours, or market your practice to the community. Here is the sign up link. 

LISTEN: Raising Joy Podcast on Gun Violence

On this episode of the Raising Joy podcast, we meet Dr. Jillian Peterson, founder of The Violence Project, a nonpartisan nonprofit that created the largest and most comprehensive database on the life histories of mass shooters. She is a forensic psychologist, professor of criminology and author of “The Violence Project – How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic.” 

Her work has helped school leaders, police departments and universities across the nation adopt realistic tools for violence prevention. Listen in to hear what Dr. Peterson learned about mass shooters in her research and what parents and caregivers can do to help prevent a school shooting. 
 

April Cultural Observances 

Sharing information about cultural holidays and observances is an important way to learn about our diverse workforce and raise awareness of challenges and successes of various groups. Share with us how you observe Diversity Month, Autism Acceptance Month and National Arab American Heritage Month. We are hard at work on content all about these observances. 

If you have any ideas or recommendations for upcoming cultural holidays and observances that you would like to see us cover, email us at InternalCommunications@cookchildrens.org.