A visual guide to help reassure parents when hospitalized for bronchiolitis

Oxygen masks in the hospital, Ventolin and its applicator, snot, cough… These are common elements when a child gets sick with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). When bronchiolitis, a disease caused by a virus, prevents your child from breathing normally, you should go to a pediatric emergency room. The road was difficult, the younger the children, the worse. When they talk about joining a factory. Parents find themselves in a critical situation of stress and anxiety.

To reduce the difficulties of a child’s first hospitalization, a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) nurse at the University Hospital of Burgos (HUBU) and illustrator Marina Paix created the book “Bronchiolitis in the NICU.” A guide for fathers and mothers.” A device that, through its drawings, tells Leo about the entrance and explains the steps of everything they find in the process. “The goal is to have a simple tool for parents to reduce the anxiety and stress caused by their children’s hospitalization,” explained HUBU Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Chief Veronica Navarrete.

The guidelines address one of the “main reasons for the most frequent hospitalizations, both on the ward and a small percentage of patients end up in intensive care,” said pediatric services chief Manuel Merino. This pathology generates income for two to three weeks, and “the management will improve the adaptation of parents to this process.”

A tool that does not replace close, personal communication between doctors and nurses and the patient’s immediate family, but rather complements it. “It’s not just about handing out guidance and that’s it, it’s support because the word and the proximity of the professional will continue to exist, but it helps us involve families, be proactive in the process. And so that what they do with children at home, they can do in the hospital,” Pe said.

The nurse and illustrator are integrated into the Graphic Medicine Society, which explores the use of images, comics, or infographics as a healthcare resource between professionals, between professional and patient, and even between patients. “For us, handling monitors, oxygen, IVs is a very common experience… For parents, this is a moment of stress and nerves that we can help reduce with these images,” he explained in a management presentation at the HUBU assembly. hall.

It provides illustrations and all the scientific rigor of healthcare in this type of pathology, and also addresses issues related to the humanization of the hospital environment, with links to scientific publications on all these topics.

Thus, the admission process is analyzed, explaining what a pediatric intensive care unit is, what its specialists do, and what treatments and steps will be followed with a child with bronchiolitis. The manual will be published in a total of 300 copies and prepared in blue tones for ease of printing.

The document will also be available for download via QR code and, starting tomorrow, will be delivered to all parents who find themselves in the situation of their child being hospitalized due to this respiratory virus, which has decreased thanks to vaccination.