Editor in Chief: E.A. Glasper
On the 4th May 2011, the first International Paediatric Day was held in Genoa (Italy) on the theme: “Paediatric Nursing: Teaching Excellence and Patient Safety”, presented by Prof. Edward Alan Glasper.
The Conference, organized by the Directorate-General of the ‘Giannina Gaslini’ Children’s Hospital and Scientific Institute in Genoa, was held at the ‘Germana Gaslini’ International Centre for Clinical Education and Training, during which Prof. Glapser presented the “Children and Young People Health Audit Policy Tool” (Coles L, Glasper EA, Battrick C, Brown S., 2010).
The ‘G. Gaslini’ Children’s Hospital and Scientific Institute is the largest in Northern Italy, with its 22 buildings spread across over 73.000 square meters of littoral land, two-thirds of which are gardens.
This Institute has all the paediatric specialties, many laboratories and university chairs, most of which have their own specialisation schools. In fact, since its foundation, it has been the seat of the University of Genoa, where physicians specialise in Paediatrics, Paediatric Surgery, Clinical Psychology and Child Neuropsychiatry, and it is the historical centre for nursing education.
With its 500 beds, it has about 50 000 admissions per year, and over 40 000 children accessing its Accident and Emergency Department. About 45% of the children come from other Regions – both from Northern Italy and abroad – and in some of its wards of excellence, the percentage of admissions of children coming from other Regions is higher than 80%. Each year, about 600 foreign children are admitted, and generally come from 60 countries. In 2007, the ‘G. Gaslini’ Institute was certified by Joint Commission International.
Following the presentation of the “Children and Young People Health Audit Policy Tool”, the Directorate-General of the ‘G. Gaslini’ Institute commissioned the PhD School of Nursing Research of the University of Genoa, a project called: Reengineering the Giannina Gaslini Institute of Genoa on the model of Child and Family Centred Care (CFCC).
One of the main objectives of this project was to measure the standards of the quality of care provided to children at the G. Gaslini Institute, using the “Children’s and young people’s health policy audit tool”, which was validated and adapted to the Italian context.
Today, a year after the project was launched, the tool’s phase of adaptation to the Italian context has been completed, and with the acknowledgment of the author of this tool, Prof. Glasper, in Italy we how have a validated tool that can be used to assess compliance with the quality standards of the paediatric healthcare services.
Declaration of Interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.
References
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