Saint Jude Research Hospital for Children Saint Jude’s Children’s Hospital is one of the largest, fastest growing and most technologically advanced hospitals in the world. They are committed to finding cures for childhood cancers and other catastrophic diseases. They were founded in 1962 by actor Danny Thomas. It’s National Fund Raising campaign is the primary source of funds, along with federal grant money. The mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is to advance cures, and means of prevention, for pediatric catastrophic disease through research and treatment (Stjudeorg, 2015). This mission is being accomplished daily with the significant research done in the field of pediatric oncology. Founder, Danny Thomas believed that no child should be denied treatment, regardless of the family’s ability to pay and even after his death, no child is turned away. St. Jude has also partnered with other charities such as the Ronald McDonald house to allow families to have an extended stay in its hotel in close proximity to the hospital, so that the family’s financial burden is even further lessened. In 2012 Senator Steve Cohen authored an amendment to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) that fed 10 Billion dollars into the National Institutes of Health (Housegov, 2015). This organization is responsible for funding research on diseases such as cancer, AIDS, and diabetes. The funds are distributed through an application process. When the ARRA went into effect, the CEO of St. Jude’s William E. Evans, Pharmacist, had ample preliminary studies and research childhood Leukemia. This preliminary research was enough to get him a grant. With this grant money this allowed Mr. Evans to hire full-time staff and they have made rapid strides in their research, with the help of Dr. Mary Relling. This funding has allowed for the DNA sequencing necessary to pen point several different DNA strands related to Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia and assisting with more tailored treatments with less side effects. This will, in turn, decrease the incidence of relapse and eventually lower the rate of disease related morbidity. St. Jude participates in a Quality Improvement Initiative that focuses on Quality of life. They have instituted a Palliative Care program that follows each child from onset of symptoms to end of treatment and even after. Palliative care takes a multidisciplinary approach to providing care for critically ill patients through symptom management, from pain and physical and the mental stresses that come along with serious illness (stjude.org 2015). This program includes frequent follow-ups by nursing professionals. The palliative care team helps to educate caregivers on disease process management, medication uses and administration, pain management, and they also consult with all services received by the effected child to provide a seamless coordination of care. The team not only provides care for the child’s physical needs, but they also provide emotional support to their families. St. Jude uses Cerner Millennium software to assist with patient care (stjude.org, 2015). This greatly improves patient outcomes by housing patient records in real time. In every room the health care provider has the entire patient chart at their finger tips. Medication errors are greatly reduced as this software aides in automated medication administration. Medications are dispensed automatically as well as there being a multitude of medications that are administered Intravenously with the assistance of software. This takes human error off the table. While all medication errors are dangerous, they are even more severe in children due to a decrease in body mass. Positive Patient Identification PPI was instituted using barcodes, which prevents the wrong patient from receiving the incorrect medication or treatment. St. Jude is using cutting edge technology to map the human genome. This research will allow doctors to identify which tumors may be malignant before they have a chance to grow and metastasis. If these cancers can be treated early the overall outcome will improve for the patient. By studying patients from disease onset to end stage disease process, doctors were able to map mutations in the DNA profile which gives a marker for the genes to monitor. This can eventually lead to more accurate diagnosing methods, allowing for earlier diagnosis. Genome mapping is allowing St. Jude to meet the needs of its patients and exceed industry standards for research and patient care. When the hospital was founded, the survival rate of children with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia was 4%. Today’s survival rate of children with ALL is a huge 90% in great part due to St. Jude’s initiative in research (stjude.org, 2015).

References
Stjudeorg. (2015). Stjudeorg. Retrieved 19 December, 2015, from https://www.stjude.org/

Housegov. (2015). Housegov. Retrieved 23 December, 2015, from https://cohen.house.gov/about-me/legislative-accomplishments