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The Muma Children’s Hospital at TGH’s Top-Tier Pediatric Trauma Care Exemplifies National Injury Prevention Day

The power of the Muma Children’s Hospital at TGH’s renowned pediatric trauma care runs deep with a multidisciplinary team and boundless resources. It reaches beyond TGH’s elite status as a Level 1 Trauma Center for adults and children – Florida’s first accredited Level 1 service since 2014 and one of only three in the state that treats children with severe or life-threatening injuries.

As the country prepares to mark National Injury Prevention Day on Nov. 18 (and observe the theme for the entire month), it’s worth underscoring what also elevates the Muma Children’s Hospital at TGH’s pediatric trauma services: the doctors, nurses and staff who provide the highest degree of care, day in and day out.

“I think the hardest thing is when you lose the ability to take care of your own child and have to trust strangers,” says pediatric critical care surgeon Dr. Keith Thatch, the Muma Children’s Hospital at TGH’s trauma medical director and chief of pediatric surgery.

“You have to trust not only that the emergency provider knows what to do, but that you will end up in the place where your child will receive the ultimate care they need. At the Muma Children’s Hospital, you’ll be at a place that not only understands what your child is going through but what you’re going through. And we are uniquely set up to do just that.”

Dr. Thatch and his team live by this simple, reassuring philosophy to families coming to the Muma Children’s Hospital at TGH amid fear and uncertainty: “I say to these families, ‘Okay, you’ve entered these doors, and your child just became my child. It’s what a frightened mom and dad need to hear in that moment.”

Echoes Kristyn Carter, lead pediatric acute care nurse practitioner: “They’re going into surgery or being treated not just as a ‘diagnosis’ but truly as one of our children. We have that evidence-based practice backing us. We have the research. We have the technology. And we have the world-class care to go with it.”

Muma Children's Hospital service dog Millie with a patient

In addition to its main campus on Davis Islands, Tampa General has multiple pediatric emergency locations in the area, including the TGH Brandon Emergency Center freestanding emergency department and a freestanding emergency department at Kennedy Boulevard and North Willow Avenue.

The 15,000-square-foot Kennedy location is just a mile from Tampa General’s main facility, offering a convenient option when emergencies arise.

The new Kennedy facility significantly expands Tampa General’s emergency capacity in the community, serves both children and adults, offers easy access and serves as an ideal complement to TGH’s main emergency department.

In addition, the Muma Children’s Hospital at TGH provides a wide range of multidisciplinary support services that are essential to a child’s well-being during recovery. The team includes child life specialists, schoolteachers working in a classroom for patients staying at the hospital for an extended period of time, psychologists, case managers, social workers and pediatric occupational and physical therapists.

“We understand not only what your child is going through but what you are going through,” says Melissa Golombek, vice president, Muma Children’s Hospital at TGH & TGH Women’s Institute.

“We’re uniquely set up for that, from our Child Life department to our social workers to our neuropsychology department, as well as all our subspecialties. We’re not here to just take care of the injuries, but the psychosocial part of those injuries. And we’re here to help the whole family with the results of those injuries and how we can help them with tomorrow, let alone today.”

And that all ties back to the staff, such as Carter, nurse practitioner and pediatric trauma coordinator Anne Blevins, and many others. “I feel at times I’m the arms and legs of the program,” Dr. Thatch says, “but our nurses and staff are the heart of the program. They’re the ones who keep it beating every day.”

 

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*Presented by Tampa General Hospital | Originally published in the November 2024 issue of Tampa Bay Parenting Magazine.