Ready. Set. Home!

Creating New Ways to Engage Family Caregivers

For decades, our clinical staff has worked to provide the highest level of care to patients at our Pediatric Specialty Hospital while teaching family caregivers how to provide this care once they return home. To streamline our training efforts and provide additional support to family caregivers, we created the Ready. Set. Home! program.

Ready. Set. Home! is a nine-part educational video series and companion manual geared toward family caregivers as they learn care at our facility and continue practicing it at home. Ready. Set. Home! covers a range of complex and everyday care tasks, with real-life patient simulations, to ensure each family has the knowledge and tools they need to keep their child healthy at home.

Ready. Set. Home! is available to patient families from within our facility as well as from home through a streaming app.

Additionally, each family will receive a personalized manual that is geared toward their child’s specific medical needs. The manual covers all of the topics presented in our video series as well as some additional detailed information and a special community resources section. Having easy access to the videos and manual means that family caregivers can revisit a topic as many times as they need to to feel confident in providing their child’s care.

Our video series covers the following topics

  • Caring for a Central Line
  • Changing a Tracheostomy Tube
  • Go Bag
  • G-tube Care
  • Nesting with Your Child
  • Packing Your Kid Kart
  • Trach Care
  • Traveling with Medical Equipment
  • Troubleshooting Tracheostomy Emergencies

If you are a patient family looking to access Ready. Set. Home! online, click the link below.

Ready. Set. Home!

Please note that this site is password-protected for families of Pediatric Specialty Hospital patients only. If you’d like to access the videos and are not a former patient, please contact Bethany Bartilson at bbartilson@chomepgh.org.

These videos are not to be used for teaching by themselves as they are an overview of the process, however, can be used to supplement teaching from a healthcare professional. These videos are most successful when viewed during or after teaching within The Children’s Home & Lemieux Family Center.

Award-Winning Program

In spring 2021, Ready. Set. Home! received the inaugural 2021 Innovation Award from the Society of Pediatric Nurses (SPN). This national recognition aims to identify and recognize new and creative approaches that will provide better quality care for children and their families.