Carina de Munck is a pediatric nurse at KinderThuisZorg. For the past two years she has fulfilled the role of coordinator in better cooperation: she develops and improves cooperation with   (pediatric) hospitals in a large part of the country. Setting up and expanding Medical Child Care Cooperation is therefore her job.

“As KinderThuisZorg, we work entirely according to the MKS method, all our work processes are designed accordingly. My job is to work with children's and other departments in hospitals to see what steps can be taken to realize or improve Medical Child Care Collaboration in their specific situation.”

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“This can be done very easily. Pediatric nurses in the hospital often already work according to the MKS method, without naming it or recognizing it as such. For example, if you have regular contact with a children's home care organization for a certain group of children, that is already a start.”

“MKS then offers all kinds of possibilities to expand what you are already doing into cooperation for the benefit of all children who need care outside the hospital. You choose those elements that fit the work processes of your department. The goal is to keep in mind that you want the care for the child and family in the hospital to flow seamlessly into care at home. The trick is to organize this in such a way that it is pleasant to work for the department.”

“MKS is not complicated. Think from the heart and act from the best interest of the child and family”

“When I talk to pediatric nurses working in the hospital, I often tell them how Medical Child Care Collaboration is set up in other hospitals. This way I can show that this can differ considerably per hospital, and I enable departments to assess what is the best picture for themselves. Yes, MKS is custom work. It is about embedding MKS in your work process. So that it suits you.”

“What I still hear regularly is that Medical Child Care Cooperation is intended for children with long-term and complex care needs. Not less true: MKS means good care on both sides of the hospital wall for every child. Whether it is long-term and complex, or short-term and medically less complex.”

Simple care that is complex

“Take, for example, a premature baby who is allowed to leave the hospital, but with a nasogastric tube. From the hospital's perspective, the 'discharge' is a formality, and that probe requires relatively simple care in one's own environment. But for the parents it is a huge transition. They come home after weeks in the hospital, and in their specific home situation, the care for that nasogastric tube can be very complex.”

“If there has not been a good transfer from the hospital to that of the children's home care, that can be a major problem. The children's home care nurse is then at the door of those parents, but has no idea what he or she will find. In order to provide good care, it is important to know the situation in which the child and family find themselves.”

Will those parents make it?

“In the case of a nasogastric tube, the transfer must therefore mainly concern the non-medical circumstances. Medically, the story is often clear, but how is it socially, are the parents doing well, have they thought about the future? It is precisely those kinds of subjects that are much more important in the home situation than the medical aspect. While in the department it is the other way around. The medical aspect is the most important there.”

“I hope that we, as healthcare professionals from both worlds, will get to know each other better at the symposium 'Their lives, our care' on 20 April. We often still have a distorted picture of how things are going with colleagues in the other setting. My colleagues in children's home care sometimes have insufficient insight into how the processes in the hospital are progressing. And vice versa, that is also the case.”

MKS spark that jumps over

“But I also see that the MKS spark is flying in more and more hospitals. It then starts with one or two pediatric nurses who think: yes, MKS, that is child and family-oriented care, we want to get started with that! They simply start, are not held back by all kinds of obstacles and infect colleagues with their enthusiasm. This is how the fire starts to run in more and more places.

"You don't want to miss that as a pediatric nurse? Then make sure you're there on April 20. Let's meet, so that we can find each other even better afterwards!"

Also come to the symposium

What does Medical Child Care Collaboration look like in the Children's Burn Center Beverwijk? And at the Amphia in Breda? Fellow pediatric nurses inside and outside the hospital tell the story on April 20 in Soest. At the MKS Afternoon Symposium 'Their life, our care'. Don't you want to know more about that? Come too! Sign up .