Moving from bedside to clinic broadens a nurse's perspective

By Louise Kinross

Nancy Campbell (left) has worked as a registered practical nurse at Holland Bloorview for 15 years. She was hired straight out of nursing school, and worked the first 12 years with children on our complex continuing care (CCC) unit. She then moved to outpatient services to work in our hypertonia, spina bifida and Rett syndrome clinics. Rohan Mahabir suggested Nancy for our candid interviews on what it means to work in children’s rehab.

BLOOM: How did you get into nursing here?

Nancy Campbell: I love children. And this is where I landed after nursing school. I was very interested in pediatric nursing and when I had the opportunity to come and interview and was offered a position, I came and I never left.

BLOOM: What does a day look like for you?

Nancy Campbell: Most of my time is spent in our hypertonia clinic, working with children who have increased muscle tone. They may have stiff muscles or uncontrolled movements that make it difficult to walk or sit comfortably in chairs.

We do a nursing assessment where we ask about their general health and their reactions to any tone medications or interventions, to see if what we’ve recommended is working. Laurie Liscumb (photo right), who is the other nurse, and I are the point people for organizing follow-up appointments, funding or casting and providing education about interventions and medications.

BLOOM: What’s the greatest challenge?

Nancy Campbell: When we see children in pain. Working within this system means that there’s often a wait to fix that. For example, there will be a wait for a child to get an appointment for Botox injections at SickKids.

BLOOM: So it’s the moral dilemma of seeing pain and not being able to relieve it?

Nancy Campbell: Exactly. Wishing you could help immediately. We also see the impact that pain has on entire families—on siblings and parents and sleep and relationships.

BLOOM: How do you cope with that?

Nancy Campbell: By talking to my colleagues. And to families. Even if we can’t offer the immediate support of the intervention, I hope speaking about pain and going through the journey together helps.

BLOOM: What do you love about your job?

Nancy Campbell: I love the people. I love the team I work with. They’re super supportive and everybody really does want our clients to have the best life they can have and we’re all working towards that goal. You see it in every decision.

I love the families. Sometimes you look at a situation and think ‘If that was me, I don’t know if I could pull myself out of bed in the morning.’ But these families try their best to keep it all together. They’re resilient.

BLOOM: What have you learned from families?

Nancy Campbell: It’s really important to families that you see them as families, and not just as caregivers to a disabled child. When I moved from working with inpatients to outpatients, I realized that these are all families with their own lives happening elsewhere, and it’s not just clinical. You have to figure out how a clinical assessment will fit into a particular family’s life. Will it work and have meaning for that family, or not?

BLOOM: I didn’t realize you’d worked on CCC. What were the challenges there?

Nancy Campbell: Helping families cope with grief when their child suffers a catastrophic injury is very difficult.

BLOOM: How do you support those families?

Nancy Campbell: By trying to read the situation, to know whether a parent was ready to have a discussion about it, or needed space. I always tried to make my interaction with the child positive, so I could role model that you could still have a positive relationship with this beautiful little child.

BLOOM: What did you love about working on CCC?

Nancy Campbell: Developing long-term relationships with families. It was developing that trusting relationship where families felt safe having you with their child—and especially when they couldn’t be there.

BLOOM: How did you make the decision to move to outpatient nursing?

Nancy Campbell: I love bedside nursing, so I was hesitant when the opportunity came up. But I was looking for a new challenge with my career and new learning opportunities. I do miss the hands-on work with inpatient clients. In outpatients, you’re doing more interview-type assessments. You’re not helping someone have a shower.

BLOOM: What did you learn in your new role?

Nancy Campbell: I had worked with a lot of children with cerebral palsy on the unit, but moving into outpatient work expanded my knowledge about treatment options.

It’s too bad we don’t have a better meshing between inpatients and outpatients, because what we could learn from each other would definitely improve care on the units.

BLOOM: Do you mean in terms of treatments or your attitude to nursing?

Nancy Campbell: Both. If I went back to inpatients now from a more therapy-focused second floor, I would change the way I nurse. Knowing that these families go home and have their own lives would encourage me to empower the families more.

Sometimes I think we felt on CCC we were helping families by taking over the care of the child, because we knew the parents were stressed and tired. But in some ways, that’s disempowering, because maybe they felt they couldn’t do it as well, or we didn’t trust them to do it, or that we were watching and they felt judged.

I’ve learned a lot by seeing families take care of their kids at home. If I was on CCC now, I would help more by doing less. I would let the families figure things out with support. I’d encourage parents to really be in charge of care and encourage the kids to do as much as they can for themselves. I wouldn’t be so worried about time constraints.

BLOOM: What kind of constraints?

Nancy Campbell: Like a child needs to learn to brush his teeth, but the school bus is leaving, so you do it quickly for him.

BLOOM: Anything else?

Nancy Campbell: There are so many opportunities to share knowledge between inpatients and outpatients. So if I have a child with spina bifida on the unit and I know there’s an expert in spina bifida downstairs, I should reach out. Too often we work in isolation on the units. We need to remember to engage with the rest of the services in the hospital.

BLOOM: What do you think prevents that?

Nancy Campbell: It’s not knowing what we don’t know, and not fully understanding the depth of knowledge that our colleagues possess.

BLOOM: What advice would you give a nurse just starting out at Holland Bloorview?

Nancy Campbell: To be open-minded and creative and to let families help drive the decisions you make. To figure out what the family’s vision of their child is, and help them get there, rather than putting your vision of what 'should' be onto the child.

BLOOM: I guess that involves a lot of listening.

Nancy Campbell: Yes. And it’s not about performing tasks, it’s about quality of life. If you perform a task but the child is no happier or healthier at the end, then the task isn’t of any value.