Initiative: Holistic School in Hospital Initiative
Institution: Queen Sirikit National Institute of Child Health
Problem: Queen Sirikit National Institute of Child Health (QSNICH) is a public hospital for children (0-18 years) under the Department of Medical Service (DMS), Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) in Thailand. QSNICH caters to over 10,000 cases annually, where many cases require patients long-term hospitalizations, which inevitably create lengthy absences from schools. As such, students are deprived of academic opportunity and find it difficult to catch up. Often, this results in delayed graduation or increased drop-out rates. Initially, teachers were brought in to teach the missing lessons in the hospitals. However, there were four main problems: first, there were limited numbers of teachers to cover all the core subjects. Second, the program lacked nation-wide integration and scalable platform as it was developed on an ad hoc basis and each hospital developed the program separately. Third, the program was only available in well-established hospitals. Fourth, young-patients and families were excluded from participating in decision making and tailoring the academic courses.
Solution: The HSH was created to foster a learning environment for young-patients with long-term hospitalization and to provide holistic care (physical, mental, social and spiritual) using Information Technology (IT). The program creates Individual Education Plans (IEP), which also helps lower teacher demands and promotes e-Learning. Flexibility of e-learning provided patients and families the ability to select and tailor their own lesson plans and promotes standardization of curriculum.
Impact: In 2013, there were 23 HSH networks and 47,630 young patients using in the education program. The same year 99.4 per cent students in the program were reintegrated in schools and passed their exams.