By Eric Brooks, UCSF
The early days of a newborn’s life are supposed to be filled with love and hope.
In the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco, Kathleen Cinelli, RN, sees the other side of the coin. The clinical nurse cares for patients — all infants and children — dealing with congenital heart disease. Most are born with some sort of structural abnormality in their heart that requires open heart surgery to resolve the issue before they’re ever able to go home, a trying and intense process for both the young patients and their families.
“Working at the bedside in the Pediatric Cardiac ICU is very demanding,” Cinelli says.
Patients can spend close to a year recovering from such an operation.
“It’s impossible not to bond with the patients and their families,” she says. “Our compassion for these families doesn’t stop once they get discharged from the hospital.”
But that’s usually where the two are separated. It’s commonplace for staff not to maintain contact with patients after they leave.
Recognized with the 2024 Distinguished Nurse Award for her outstanding work, Cinelli has established a creative way to keep in touch with those families even after they leave Benioff Children’ Hospitals’ care through Hearts at Home. The program creates a holistic connection with patients and their families using email newsletters and events.
That means lots of joyful photos and updates about birthdays, holidays and important milestones in the patients’ lives — weeks, months and even years after they’ve left. The images and updates have been a welcome sight for Cinelli and her colleagues following the ordeal the once-tiny newborns endured during their time at UCSF.
“I figured if I could open up this pathway for us to communicate and create this community that stays connected, that there was no limit to what we could continue to learn from each other,” Cinelli explains.
The program pays big dividends for everyone in her unit. “I’m able to share those photos and videos with our medical team and inspire everyone to continue to do the hard work that we’re doing within the hospital,” she says. “It’s created this avenue for communication that we’ve never had before.”