This amazing mural was done by the team at Northside Hospital Forsyth, Cumming, Georgia. Thanks for sharing!

What worked?

I think the education tips for staff and parents were amazing. It really got the conversation going for all of our staff – instead of just the ones who were already invested.  ~ Bonnie from Kelowna General, British Columbia

The Grandparent Challenge was super fun and spontaneous. Not sure you can buy that kind of enthusiasm.  ~ Luisa from Sunnybrook HSC, Ontario

I did a survey of grad parents and gathered some very powerful words that I shared with staff – this has been identified in our post-event survey as a very powerful motivator to get those babies onto their parents’ chests! ~ Joanna at Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, New Hampshire

We used a “I’m ready to Kangaroo!” laminated sign at each bedside. During rounds, eligibility for kangaroo care was discussed, thus making a VISIBLE team decision for each baby. ~ Tammy from Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, New Hampshire

Probably the most important outcome of our kangaroo-a-thon was the increased parent engagement on the unit. It was very rewarding to read the loving messages that many parents added to their infants’ kangaroos that they posted on the wall every time they did KC. Another highlight was the increased participation of dads on the unit and it was very rewarding to see them holding their infants in KC. It was also just what our unit needed to create the momentum that we needed to increase the use of our new wraps that had been acquired and introduced prior to the kangaroo-a-thon, but were not being used on a wide-scale yet.  ~ Stacy from Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital, Loma Linda, California.

We recently installed Roku boxes to the large tv screens in each pod, allowing us to personalize messages to parents and staff. They went live during the kangaroo a thon. I did notice that the hours of KC increased after this was up. We kept a running total of hours of KC and encouraged more of it. It worked!  ~  April from Woman’s Hospital, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

We had more parents in the unit and the families visited for longer periods of time. We saw infants in one weekend improve in their respiratory status going from HFOV to Conventional Ventilators, Ventilators to SiPap , one patient went from ventilator to HFNC all in one weekend. We saw weight gains on patients who had been maintaining, we had improved thermoregulations, we had happier parents and babies. ~ Kristin from Valley Children’s Healthcare NICU, Madera, California

The daily raffle draw for prizes (one for staff and one for parents) was a big motivator. We saw parents become more proactive and asking their nurse for KC time.  ~ Ashley from Erlanger Health  System NICU, Chattanooga, Tennessee

Our Neonatologist (and Medical Director) wore a kangaroo costume I bought for morning multidisciplinary rounds. What you can’t quite grasp is the fact that he is the LAST person anyone would think would wear a kangaroo costume. Everyone LOVED it and it was a great kick off to our Kangaroo-a-thon.  ~ Amy from Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I think the best part for me was when I went to collect the sheets at the end of the challenge and one dad said “Aw man, I can’t write on the sheet anymore? I wanted to get more hours than the whole sheet contained.” ~ Heather from Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial NICU, Orillia, Ontario. (Last year’s Level 2 winner! )

What could change?

Our neonatologist suggests that there be a category for “koala’ cuddling for volunteers. ~ Bonnie from Kelowna General, Kelowna, British Columbia.

We would love some funding! How did the rest of you go about getting any funding for your event?  Maybe we could have a running tally with all the hospitals on a website all together next year? And maybe a chat room where we could all be having a dialogue during the event? I think that would be really interesting.  ~ Amanda from Montreal Children’s, Quebec.

Level II specific education, We don’t have micro prems or long term vents so some of the education points, while interesting, were not as applicable. ~ The team from Peterborough, Ontario.

Find ways of communicating together during the challenge to cheer each other on! ~ multiple c enters

Find better ways of tallying hours.  ~ multiple centers

Start promoting earlier and bringing more team  members into the project.  This project really relies on an interdisciplinary approach ~ multiple centers

It’s hard to keep momentum going for two weeks. The first week is GREAT – how can we keep that going? ~ multiple centers

We also have a number of babies who have been in the NICU for over 1 month and many of 3 months, some over 6 and 12 months! So older babies can be challenging to do kangaroo care with, but we suggested to them to just do chest to chest holding. ~ Amanda from Montreal Children’s Hospital, Montreal, Quebec.

What next?

We are going to have a skills week set up for staff to practice transferring a baby on the jet, and also have staff practice having the parent pick the baby up out of the bed versus staff hand the baby to them. We are also going to be doing a year long incentive program with quarterly Rangers tickets, T-shirts, and other nurse staffing prizes (no float pass, no weekends for one schedule, etc.)  ~ Heather from Cook Children’s, Texas.

We plan on challenging some other Quebec hospitals next year. The response on our unit was amazing! ~ Amanda from Montreal Children’s Hospital, Montreal, Quebec.

I think it will be helpful to have extra kangaroo champions available periodically to encourage and support the bedside staff. ~ Debbie from Community Memorial Hospital, Venture, California.

Education of parents!! The nurses are all for KC but some of the parents haven’t bought into yet. ~ Dawn from Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center, Reno, Nevada

If there was a way to find out how other units were doing or how they had done this might have helped with the competitive spirit of our group. We have some very competitive nurses on our unit. ~ Trisha from Women’s Hospital, Greenboro, North Carolina.

I think our docs and nnps could still be bigger zealots and explain to parents why KC is so important. Ask parents every day on rounds; remind them again about the importance…Parents want to do what’s best for their children and we need to teach them about this. ~ Howard from Salem Oregon (last year’s winner!)

What interesting things did you learn (and/or did we learn from you)?

It was surprising to observe how competitive the families were with this challenge, and how they were interested in recording their hours daily.  ~ Donna from North York General, Ontario

We consider ALL of our babies eligible for skin to skin holding. Vents, chest tubes, umbilical lines are no barrier. The only time we stop is if a baby isn’t tolerating it well.  ~ Sheryl from Memorial Children’s Hospital, Indiana.

The eye-opening moment was realizing that kangaroo care is not only for pre-term but for term babies. We are going to concentrate on supporting kangaroo care not only the first few days of life but ongoing during the entire hospital stay. ~ Sandra, Northside Forsyth Hospital, Georgia.

Our longest baby held was 17 hours in 24 hours. ~ Lynn from IU Health North NICU Riley, Carmel, Indiana.

One nurse came to me to tell me how a baby was grunty and after a few minutes of skin to skin with the father, the baby settled and the vital signs were normal. She stated that this episode might have made her a believer in skin to skin. If one nurse was able to see the benefits to skin to skin than to me, this challenge was a success. ~ Lindsay from Thunder Bay NICU, Thunder Bay, Ontario.

We encourage skin to skin in the Operating Room if baby is stable, and also with any blood draws we will do skin to skin. We are now starting to engage the lab in this process also. ~ Margaret from Guelph General Hospital, Guelph, Ontario.

This year we had our L&D and LDRP units participate at the same time as us. They kept their own log sheets and educated patients and visitors on the importance of Kangaroo Care. ~ Diane from St Boniface Hospital, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

– – – – – – – –

Thank you all so much for sharing these thoughts and experiences with us.  What a remarkable community this is!  The generosity and dedication of all the Kangaroo Challenge participants is inspiring.  We would love to hear from you if you have suggestions for how to make things better or how to address some of the issues mentioned above.  We will continue to post and share what we learn, and are eager to keep this conversation going.

If you are wondering where your hospital stood in the grand scheme of things, here’s a graph that shows all participants and their totals (de-identified).   PDF: KC2016 (1) 

We know our American friends have big barriers to overcome regarding parental presence (i.e. different policies related to maternity and parental leave), so we are pretty impressed with their results.

Thanks again for being great sports, wonderful teams, and amazing people!

Happy holding!

The post More words from winners! appeared first on Your Health Matters.

This is the first year that the Alberta Children’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) has participated in the Kangaroo Challenge. We are the surgical level 3 NICU located in Calgary, Alberta that operates as a single family room style unit.

A big highlight of the Challenge for us was that one of our premature and surgical patients on the unit was kangarooed for 28 hours straight by both parents as they took shifts.

One of our biggest challenges, as a surgical unit, was being able to accommodate parents holding their babies while doing our routine surgical care. We frequently were changing ostomy bags on babies while parents continued to do skin-to-skin care.

Another challenge we faced was parental presence in the NICU. We are the surgical NICU for all of Southern Alberta which means that a lot of our babies’ families are from surrounding areas and cannot be on the unit all the time. We are very understanding of the struggle parents face to try to be in the NICU with their infants as well as fulfilling their obligations at home. Families who were providing kangaroo care earned a kangaroo to place on their baby’s door for every hour they did skin-to-skin care which was a great morale booster and cultivated some friendly competition between families on the unit.

Unfortunately, we also had some babies on the unit that were accumulating very few kangaroos on their door. It was very important to us, as a unit, to demonstrate that we value the importance of positive touch for all babies, regardless of how often their family could visit. One idea presented by one of our team members was to print off koalas to place on the door of babies that were held by nurses or volunteers. These koalas were not included in the total of kangaroo hours we did as a unit but helped us in our goal to demonstrate to families and staff that we are active in providing meaningful touch to all infants.

The committee that decided to lead the Kangaroo Challenge at the Alberta Children’s Hospital NICU was the Parent Partnership in Care Committee. One of our main goals in the committee is to work in a partnership with our patients’ families as we assist them in becoming the primary caregiver and advocate to their ill infant.

One of the big changes that we noticed during the duration of the challenge was how families began to visibly become more comfortable in providing newborn care to their infants. Parents noted that they were able to more clearly identify their baby’s likes and dislikes, along with their baby’s changes in breathing and stability. It was obvious to us that as the NICU families spent more time proving skin-to-skin care to their infants, they were able to become more active in their baby’s day-to-day NICU care.

Though the Kangaroo Challenge is finished, we hope to keep the momentum going strong on our unit. Our goal this year was to simply open the dialogue between the NICU staff and families about the importance of skin-to-skin care for their infants.

We wanted to see parents asking for skin-to-skin care with their babies as well as NICU staff routinely offering it. Our team was blown away by the amount of participation and enthusiasm by the families in the NICU and it contributed to some excellent energy on the unit. Although we haven’t gotten together as a team yet to discuss our goals for next year, I think we are all believers that with passion and knowledge from the staff, we will be able to engage our NICU families and exceed our 3.5 hour/baby/day total from this year.

Thank you so much for sharing this with us – we LOVE the idea of a baby being kangarooed for 28 hours straight!  We send a hearty congratulations to the amazing team at Alberta Children’s, our 2016 Level 3 Kangaroo Challenge Champion!

The post Words from a winner (part 2) appeared first on Your Health Matters.

First up: Donna from the winning Level 2 unit, North York General Hospital (Toronto, Ontario)

I would say that the biggest challenge we overcame was surrounding skin-to-skin time being dependent on ‘do up time’ for the infants.  We would have several families sitting by the bedside, reading or on their tablets, but not holding their sleeping infants.  Some were afraid to hold, or didn’t realize that they could.  Once they started doing skin-to-skin, they so enjoyed it and didn’t have to ask any more … they expected to hold!

Our staff was used to encouraging parents to hold their infants, but usually around these ‘do up times.’  With the education and promotion of the Kangaroo Challenge, they realized that any time was Kangaroo Time, as long as the infant was stable.  We used the Kangaroo Toolkit provided by Sunnybrook to post pictures all around the unit, as well as their ‘Benefits of skin-to skin’ for Mom, Dad and Baby.  We also posted educational information in the Parent Lounge, common areas, such as the hand washing sinks, as well as the entrance door to the NICU to educate all.  We used the Daily Parent and Staff Tips and posted them on our white board in the hallway.  We created an interprofessional working group that met weekly to plan for this event, which was a great idea, as teamwork made this a possibility.  We also involved our Corporate Communications Department to promote our event on our Corporate Twitter feed.

We decided not to make individual kangaroos and hand out to families depending on the time they held, as we didn’t want to make any of the families feel bad, if for whatever reason they were not able to be present and hold.  We kept this event positive and fun for all.

We are going to keep this education going by leaving the posters and educational sayings up, as there are always new families coming into the NICU and we know that the benefits of skin-to-skin do not stop when the Challenge is over, as they last a lifetime.

Our longest cuddle was 10 hrs.    Our families were a very motivated and competitive group with 1 family holding for 9 hrs. and 40 minutes, 1 family for 9 hours and 4 families for 8 hours.  We really didn’t expect this, but once the Challenge commenced they were so eager to start!  The day the Challenge ended one of our Moms said, “Great, now I can give him a bath.  I skipped the bath so that I could get more Kangaroo hours in!”  We all had a great laugh.

We so enjoyed this Challenge and thank you for including us. We hope to surpass our goal for next year and keep ‘The Crown’, but realize that all NICUs have great staff members who provide nothing but the best evidenced-based care for their families in the NICU.  We are all winners in my mind!

Donna – thank you so much for sharing these wise words with us. You have an exceptional team at North York, and on behalf of all the babies and families you help, thanks for your wonderful work!

The post Words from a winner (part 1) appeared first on Your Health Matters.

You have been so patient as we’ve tallied up all the numbers you’ve sent in, and now it’s time for us to announce our winners. Out of 74 North American hospitals and 21 Australian hospitals, we are very excited to say (drumroll please) that the winners of the 2016 International Kangaroo Care Challenge are:

Level 2 winner:  North York General Hospital (Toronto, Ontario) with an average of 4.1 hours of holding per baby per day! 

 Level 3/4 Winner:  Alberta Children’s Hospital (Calgary, Alberta) with an average of 3.5 hours of holding per baby per day!

These numbers are fantastic, especially when we think of what they represent … hours upon hours of brain-boosting, attachment-building, stress-busting kangaroo cuddles!  The average length of time spent holding in Level 2 units was 1.74 hours per baby per day, and in Level 3 it was 0.98 hours, so our winners can really pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

Over the next few days we will be sharing some tips and tricks from the winners and from other units who accomplished some spectacular feats.  So please check back with us soon so we can continue to learn and improve together. Until then … happy holding!

The post We have a winner! (Two, actually) appeared first on Your Health Matters.

Today is the 5^th International Kangaroo Care Day, an incredible celebration of the power of skin to skin care. Created by the inspiring Yamile Jackson, a preemie mom and entrepreneur, it has grown into a true world-wide movement.

At Sunnybrook, our Kangaroo-a-thon concludes today, and we send a huge thank you to all the staff members, parents and babies who worked together to make it a huge success. We send an especially big thanks to our breastfeeding resource nurse, Luisa King, who has put in innumerable hours making sure this year’s was bigger and better than ever. The stats have not yet been tabulated, but we think based on the numbers so far that we may have bested our all-time record, AND managed to break new ground by ensuring many babies were held for more than 8 hours each day. We are so happy.

We are also thrilled by how our friends at other units have done with their Kangaroo-a-thons as part of the Kangaroo Challenge, in which units around the world engage in a friendly kangaroo care competition. We have seen amazing coverage in the news and on social media. If you’re on Twitter, you can check in on the action with #kangaroocare, #kangaroochallenge or #kangarooathon. We have also seen a satisfying number of medical professionals dressed up as kangaroos, which is something we will encourage our staff to do next year.

Our partner, the Canadian Premature Babies Foundation, has worked hard to bring the Challenge to parents, and have posted some wonderful updates on the CPBF blog. (We’ve already watched the beautiful photo montage they created about a billion times).  They will also be offering up a lovely embroidered kangaroo to the winning unit; we won’t know who that is until the end of the month, but we will be sure to keep you posted.

We hope all of you out there enjoy today. If you are in the NICU with your baby, know that the gift of your touch is powerful beyond measure. If you are a staff member who helps reunite babies and parents, we offer you our sincere thanks. You are transforming lives with your work. And if you are home with your loved ones, give them some big hugs. They aren’t just for preemies, you know?!

Happy holding!

The post Happy 5th International Kangaroo Care Day! appeared first on Your Health Matters.

We also LOVED their Senior Neonatology Fellow who spread some joy by dressing like a kangaroo. To him we say: “You’re a kangaroo hero!”

They also shared some tips about what worked for them and some advice for other hospitals. You’ll notice some similarities between their top tips and those shared last week by our challenge winners. Both units pointed out the importance of measurement, goal-setting, and celebration. But let’s hear what UMass had to say – straight from the kangaroo’s mouth (as it were):

Developing and Implementing Kangaroo Care Practice in the NICU at Umass Memorial Hospital

• Aim:  80% of infants in the NICU are held within 5 days of admission by September 2015.

• Methods:  A Kangaroo Care Task Force was created involving nursing, the nurse educator, physician leaders (Attending & Fellow), NNPs and child life.  Meetings were held December 2014-May 2015 every 2-3 weeks for ~1-1.5hours.
  • Identifying Barriers: Initial nursing survey was created and implemented using SurveyMonkey.com. There was ~75% participation from all the nursing staff. This survey helped to identify the barriers of providing Kangaroo Care in our NICU.
  • Exclusion Criteria Developed for Kangaroo Care: Based on an extensive literature review as well as taking into consideration of the nursing survey, exclusion criteria were devised. Infants not eligible for kangaroo care were infants with a UAC/Chest tube, ELBW < 5 days old, phototherapy >2 lights, receiving ionotropic support/EEG monitoring/iNO and post op for 1^st 48h.
  • Staff & Family Education: (1) Members of the Kangaroo Care Task Force updated a nursing bulletin board every 2 weeks with information on the importance of Kangaroo Care, Kangaroo Care facts, the newly devised Kangaroo-Care exclusion criteria, results from the initial nursing survey and advertising of the upcoming Kangaroo-a-thon (2) An online education module was sent out to all the nursing staff with a 7 –question post test to help ensure that the staff were educated. (3) An informative binder with the new Kangaroo exclusion criteria was created by the members of the Kangaroo Care Task force. Several members of the Kangaroo Care Task Force took responsibility to review the information with the nursing staff individually. Each nurse provided their signature when they received the training. (4) Members of the Kangaroo care task force created an education pamphlet for parents. These pamphlets were placed in their admission packet. These pamphlets noted the expectations of them while providing kangaroo care including describing to parents the importance of kangaroo care.

• Kangaroo-a-thon: To increase the frequency and awareness of kangaroo care, we participated in a world wide competition organized by Sunnybrook Hospital. We held our first ever Kangaroo-a-thon from May 1st to May 14, 2015.
  • Advertisement prior to the event:  (1) Kangaroo-a-thon was advertised with posters at the entrance of the NICU ~ 1 week prior to the event. (2) The nursing bulletin advertised the event (3) The windows to the family room were painted with pictures of woman providing Kangaroo Care.
  • 1^st Day of the Kangaroo-a-thon: (1) A family brunch was held. (2) Our senior neonatology fellow dressed up as a Kangaroo and handed out Kangaroo stickers and labeled Kangaroo Hershey Kisses to the families and staff. (3) Several staff wore special t-shirts – “Keep Calm and Kangaroo On”. (4) Special 1^st day letter to Nurses (5) Each family was provided with a folder which included:  1^st Day Letter , Log sheet for the families to log the hours of Kangaroo care, Laminated Kangaroo picture with a baggie of foam hearts to be placed for each Kangaroo session, Laminated card which noted the 10 reasons to practice Kangaroo Care (special permission from Boba.com to copy & distribute). (6) Each nurse received a 1^st day letter.
  • Mother’s Day Brunch: This brunch was sponsored by the physicians of the NICU. Each family received a hand held mirror so they could watch their own Kangaroo Care.
  • Daily rewards/advertising: (1) We rewarded both the parents and all assisting staff for every hour of Kangaroo care that was provided. For every hour of Kangaroo Care, the parents and the nurse/assistant were given a raffle ticket and entered into a weekly raffle. Each week, the nurses received a gift card and the parent received a t-shirt, stuffed Kangaroo and a gift card. (2) For every Kangaroo care sitting, a heart sticker was placed on their bedside laminated Kangaroo. (3) At the end of each day, the hours were tallied up and stickers were placed for every 10hours of kangaroo-care on the Kangaroo Land Poster  (similar to Candy Land) that was placed at the entrance of the NICU. (4)  For every hour of Kangaroo Care, a cut out Kangaroo was placed on the entrance wall of the NICU (5) Parents were also encouraged to place heart sticker on their bedside laminated Kangaroo.  (6)  Parents were encourage to keep track of their own daily success on a log (7) Weekly success posted on NICU Parent Facebook page (8) Parents and staff were encourage to write in an anonymous journal posted by the raffle bowl about what they enjoyed about Kangaroo care. (1) Advertised in our hospital online newsletter
  • Kangaroo-a-thon Results/Discussion: We found the kangaroo-a-thon to be a success. We set a goal of 200 hours and succeeded our goal – 472 hours! Our plan is to join the Kangaroo-a-thon competition next year.
  • Improvements for the Kangaroo-a-thon: Our Kangaroo Care Task Force will be meeting as a group soon. However, at this point, we hope in the future to (1) Involve more senior leadership (2) Involve the parent advisory committee (3) Avoid the expense of color copies/photos/lamination (4) Consider posting more statistical measures – updating a run chart daily or sending daily emails with the success (5) Create a post Kangaroo-a-thon survey (6) We reached out to local newspaper/television station during the event. May need to consider setting this up prior to the event.

• Results/Discussion: In the process of reviewing the data. We identified with this process that a barrier is data collection. It was very time consuming to find information as we didn’t have a standardized way to chart first hold. A stamp was placed in the chart in March 2015 to help with documentation as well as an additional stamp on the daily flow sheet in April 2015.

Thank you so much to the team at UMass for sharing, and for putting so much creative and compassionate energy into your Kangaroo-a-thon. You’re fabulous!

The post Creativity and Kangaroo Care at UMass Memorial! appeared first on Your Health Matters.

We asked this team why they thought they won, and what tips they might have for other units who want to improve their kangaroo care or skin to skin holding rates. As befits a champion, they had excellent advice to share with us all.  In their own words …

Why did we win? 

We took a QI approach.
We have a team.
We had a SMART AIM:  to have an average skin to skin time of 2.5 hours per baby per day during our two week Kangaroo “Throw Down” from 5/4-5/17/2015.
We identified key drivers: look at/know/share your data, awareness/ visibility, engagement of all caregivers and families, small rewards, understanding importance/rationale of skin to skin.
We measured daily.

We marketed it beforehand in multiple ways.
Everyone knew our goal was 2.5 hours/baby/day.
We discussed it at daily huddles.
It was on our visibility window.
We planned celebrations during it.
We had daily small drawings for prizes and a larger reward at the end.
We all knew that we were competing with other NICUs.

We made our results very visible.
We sent daily emails with how we did each day.
Run Chart updated daily in the Nurse’s station and pointed out during huddle.

We celebrated.
We combined Kangaroo Care, Nurses’ Day, Mother’s Day Cake and Coffee Bar.
We held a Pocket Sandwiches Day.
Kangaroo gifts for families.
Daily raffle/prizes for staff  and overall end of event raffle prize for staff and NICU families.

We have a long-standing focus on parents/babies doing skin to skin.
Early on we had a nurse and physician champion.
Our QI project in NICQ 8 was to decrease time to first skin to skin after admission.
It is standard work already in our NICU.
It ‘s part of Family Integrated Care work.
It’s part of a broader focus for all families delivering in our Family Birth Center

This is part of our NICU culture—we are believers in skin to skin.
Skin to skin is an important part of care and not just something nice to do (an “add on”).

And finally ….
We involved organizational leadership (Nursing Director, CNO).
Our Parent Action Committee members were on our team.
We have wonderful parents/ families in our NICU.
The Oregon effect.

Here are some photos of the great folks at Salem doing what they do best … working together and making magic happen for babies and families. 

So, do you want to beat Salem next year?  They have kindly told us all exactly what we need to do if we want to take their crown. 

Set a goal. We suggest at least 3 hours/baby/day.
Market it.
Celebrate.
Help everyone understand the evidence–why skin to skin holding is an essential part of care.
Make skin to skin holding an expectation. Discuss at rounds and with families frequently.
Don’t forget dads.
Build documentation of S2S time into bedside work flow.
Continue to measure and share the results throughout the year.

Salem, we salute you!  Not just your tremendous focus on reuniting babies with their families, but also the generosity of spirit shown by how you share the secrets of your success.  You are true champions, each and every one of you. 

Check back next week for some more stories of success from some of the 38 hospitals involved in this amazing project. Until then, happy holding!

The post Kangaroo Throw Down … We have a WINNER! appeared first on Your Health Matters.

At Sunnybrook, we issued our Kangaroo-a-thon Throw Down a few months ago, and we are  happy to report that 35 hospitals across North America have joined in!  Many of these hospitals have been promoting and supporting kangaroo care for years, and we have learned so much from their examples. We will have final results by the end of May, but we can state already that all of you who participated (especially the babies) are gold medal winners in our eyes.

We are also beyond thrilled to learn that the Miracle Babies Foundation in Australia is leading their own Kangaroo Throw Down! This organization does incredible work supporting families and health care workers in hospitals across Australia, and it seems fitting that they are such ardent champions of kangaroo care. Be sure to check out the beautiful pictures they are sharing via their Twitter account. We await the results of their throw down with great anticipation, and we will send whoever wins their throw down something exciting!

And last (but certainly not least), today we will be wrapping up the Sunnybrook Instagram #SBcuddles contest!  Thanks so much to all the families who shared their wonderful kangaroo care moments.

Happy holding, everyone!

The post Happy International Kangaroo Care Day! appeared first on Your Health Matters.

Inspired by amazing events at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital and St Barnabas Medical Centre, we held our first Kangaroo-a-thon in 2013. This year, we decided we wanted to go a bit bigger, so we issued a challenge to other units. Could they hold their own event before May 15 (International Kangaroo Care Awareness Day) and could they beat either our initial goal of 605 hours of holding, or our 2015 total of 1028 hours?

We had hoped to get maybe 5 or 6 hospitals engaged, and we had a secret stretch goal of 10.  As of today we have 31 hospitals across North America participating in the challenge, and we couldn’t be happier.

We will know who has “won” the challenge on or about May 15, but the truth is in this sort of challenge everyone wins. The babies sure win, by getting to spend all that time with their parents. The parents win for the same reason. And all the wonderful people in all of these NICUs are certainly champions, because they have all put time, effort and passion into reuniting babies with their families.

The winners will get bragging rights, something delicious (we haven’t decided what yet), and this amazing flag which was donated by our friend and all-round amazing human Dr. Jim Gray.

We will keep you all posted on the results, but for now, we would like to share this wonderful update from our friends at McMaster. They do such groundbreaking work, and the way they embraced the challenge is really inspiring.

 Our Kangaroo-A-Thon concluded at  midnight last night and was a huge success. Thank you to Sunnybrook for the challenge and the wonderful resources provided.

 Our goal was 800 hours; we finished with a total of 873 hours.

 Last year, we completed extensive education with our staff related to providing developmentally supportive care to our patients. The education focused on protected sleep, cue based feeding, and skin to skin care. Following our education, we adapted our skin to skin policy and changed how  we viewed ‘eligibility’. With this, we saw a marked increase in skin to skin throughout the unit but needed something that would further encourage skin to skin and help break down some barriers that we were seeing. The Kangaroo-a-thon was our answer!

 We encouraged our staff through further education during the challenge (a gift basket draw helped as well!) and used the challenge as a spring board for educating our parents (who also had a gift basket draw!) on the importance of skin to skin. With this education came increased advocacy from parents, and thus, increased skin to skin in the unit!! We have broken down many barriers during this challenge; here are some of the highlights. 25 weeks gestation with cardiac defects, UAC, UVC, intubated partaking with Hand Hug on day 1 and Skin to Skin on Day 2 and every day since; Post-OP on HFO with lines partaking with Hand Hug on day 1 Post-OP and Skin to Skin on Day 2 Post-OP; Grandmother performing Skin to Skin daily; new staff partaking on first solo vent shift by aiding mother to perform modified Skin to Skin pre-op of a very unstable patient followed by Skin to Skin Post-OP day 2; open neural tube defect partaking in Skin to Skin!

Again, thank you so much for your initiative on this, what a beautiful challenge!! We are looking forward to next year!!

Also, we were featured on our local news cast and thought you would be interested! 

Thank you so much to the wonderful team at McMaster for sharing their story; even before we have overall results we can say you are champions in our eyes.  We will keep sharing updates from other participating hospitals as they roll in. Until then … happy holding!

The post Do you Kangaroo? An update on our Kangaroo Challenge appeared first on Your Health Matters.