Advance Practice Nurse Led Pediatric Bowel Management Clinic

The Journey to Building an Advanced Practice Nurse Led Pediatric Bowel Management Clinic

In an effort to support children with constipation with or without soiling, a Children’s Hospital in the North West created an opportunity to build a Bowel Management Clinic. To best utilize resources the clinic is structured so that an advanced practice nurse with certification in continence leads the clinic which is supported by pediatric surgeons, organizational leadership and ancillary staff. The bowel management clinic is part of pediatric colorectal surgery.

Over the course of the year the pediatric bowel management clinic has grown to see children on a regular basis and intake new cases every month. The early successes of the program have been measured by the number of referrals which reflect community awareness, quality of life for children in the program and parent satisfaction. Building a sustainable clinic required collaboration from partners within the organization and the medical community.

Having the unique opportunity to have the brick and mortar in place to build a program allowed the focus to shift to developing the quality of the bowel management program. The first step was to reach out to an established program to train staff. The next step was creating awareness of the program and developing referral systems which quickly and efficiently got children to the clinic. Established infrastructure of the organization allowed for housing of children and transportation at little to no cost. Unforeseen barriers to overcome included the impact on day-to-day operations with the increased number of children and the impact on high commodity resources.

Developing a pediatric bowel management clinic has had a positive impact on children, provided a resource for community practitioners and created a support of continuum of care for the colorectal surgery service.