Specialties
Support services
CAARE center
Children who become ill or injured as a result of parental abuse or neglect require extraordinary care. To respond to the needs of those children, the UC Davis Children's Hospital has dedicated a specialized facility—the Child and Adolescent Abuse Resources and Evaluation Diagnostic Center (CAARE Center). Medical personnel who staff the CAARE Center work closely with law enforcement, justice department and child protective services agencies to treat and shield children who are under threat or have endured abuse.
Child life program
UC Davis’ Child Life Program helps to minimize the trauma and anxiety of hospitalization and strengthen the coping skills of children during their stay while, at the same time, allowing them to continue their typical growth and development. Child Life specialists, along with music and art therapists, provide bedside medical play and preparations for procedures, familiarization with age-appropriate coping strategies, accompaniment during medical interventions, and continued education to families, staff and physicians on age-appropriate behaviors of hospitalized children. In addition, play materials are provided at each child's bedside or at the teen or children's playroom to encourage typical development while hospitalized. A full-time teacher also provides educational services for children with extended hospital stays.
Poison control center
The Northern California Poison Control Center at UC Davis provides parents with a 24-hour hotline for emergency information about potential poisoning. Specially trained pharmacists, registered nurses and physicians certified in medical toxicology are available to respond to questions about poison ingestion; irritation from toxic substances; animal, insect, snake or spider bites, and attempted suicides or drug overdoses.
Telemedicine
Enhanced video technology allows UC Davis to offer expertise to rural health-care facilities that typically have less access to pediatric critical-care and emergency-medicine physicians, pharmacists, and pediatric sub-specialists, among others. The telemedicine program offers child-abuse consultation and evaluation, child development, endocrinology, gastroenterology, oncology and hematology, and psychiatry, among others. The UC Davis pediatric critical-care telemedicine program was the first of its kind in the United States. UC Davis also uses its telemedicine technology to connect hospitalized patients with family members and friends who may be unable to visit them and to bring medical interpreters together more quickly with the physician and a patient’s family when language barriers exist.
Support groups
UC Davis Children's Hospital offers a vast amount of information on a wide varity of local support groups.