Home Care of Pediatric Tracheostomies, Ventilators, and G-Tubes

Join us for this free engaging webinar to help care for children with a trach or vent! Certificates available for all participants! Trach/vent children often have unmet or under-achieved health and developmental needs, particularly in their language and motor skill development. Their physical restrictions from the vent or oxygen make it difficult for them to move and learn skills independently. Trachs do not allow good vocalization, and children miss the early language development from babbling and responding to language cues. These challenges lead to severe motor and language delays attributable to a loss of stimulation. In addition, many children are recurrently acutely sick and hospitalized for prolonged lengths. When children are admitted, especially babies, they lose even more time to develop at home. Although there is no absolute way to avoid illness, strategies like good pulmonary toilet, oral hygiene, trach maintenance, and frequent mobilization can improve pulmonary reserve and reduce infections. However, this care requires full alignment of home nursing and families. Overall, the healthcare community has poor awareness of why children are trached or vented. Most healthcare providers are unfamiliar with airway and lung diseases in children, and thus assume trach/vent children to be neurologically or cognitively impaired. This knowledge deficit creates a huge disparity between a trached child and a non-trached child with the same cognitive capacity. When the trach and vent are seen as the reason for the child not speaking or walking, healthcare providers accept the child status quo. Unless the delay is seen as amenable, healthcare providers will not act on it. When more people understand these children, their needs, and how to take care of them, trach/vent children have access to more providers and services. This activity will result in improved healthcare outcomes throughout their lives. This activity is supported by La Rabida Children's Hospital.