Chris Green:
Hi, I’m Chris Green. I’m a pediatric pulmonologist, and I’m director of the Pediatric Pulmonary Center. Welcome to the University of Wisconsin Pediatric Pulmonary Center and the graduate course, the Interdisciplinary Coordinated Care of the Child With Chronic Illness. I hope you’ll find the PPC to be a welcoming place and the course to be useful and interesting.
It’s exciting for the PPC and the School of Nursing to offer this course. There is ever increasing national emphasis on coordinated and interdisciplinary care. The standard doctor’s office does not provide this sort of care. Even in university settings, coordinated interdisciplinary care may or may not be available. Training for learners who want to provide this sort of care is even more unusual.

We strive to deliver and teach excellent care in an interdisciplinary fashion. The course provides insight into many aspects of the care of the children with complex chronic disease. The concepts learned here should serve you well, and we hope you enjoy the course and take a lot away from it to your career in the future.

Becki Tribby:
Hi, my name is Becki Tribby, and I’m an advanced practice nurse. I have worked to develop this course and will be an instructor and the coordinator throughout the semester with this course. I’ve been a pediatric nurse for over 20 years, and I’ve been an advanced practice nurse for over 5 years, and my career has moved into the role of teaching graduate students within the last few years.

I will be with you throughout the course. I will be helping the faculty to moderate discussions, and will be helping with assignments. I will be a resource that you can use if you have questions about the course or about using the functions within the course. We have developed this course in a way that we can offer it over the Web, and I’m excited to see how people in different locations can work together to become a team.

Rhonda Yngsdal-Krenz:
Hi, my name is Rhonda Yngsdal-Krenz. I’m a pediatric respiratory care supervisor at UW-Children’s Hospital. I’m going to be teaching the Cultural Competence lesson. Cultural competence means to me being able to take care of children and families based on how they believe in their value systems and the way that they deal with health and treatment of healthcare plan.

I think it really fascinated me, learning about cultural competence, coming from a rural community where I did not have a lot of exposure to different cultures. So it was interesting for me to be able to learn about those different cultures and understand their values and belief systems and how they deal with healthcare.

Craig Becker:
Hi, I’m Craig Becker. I’m a social worker. Been with the Pediatric Pulmonary Center for a little over eight years. The classes that I will teach throughout this course are Team Function, Family Perspective, and Grief, Death, and Dying. The perspective I bring to the course is, throughout my career I’ve always worked with families with chronic illness. So I think I have a pretty good understanding of the family’s response to dealing with a child with chronic illness.

I think one of the things I enjoy most about working with families that have a child with chronic illness is helping people to navigate through the system and the resources and to really help people to sort of move through the process to reintegrate and go back to the community and be back as a family on their own.

Cindy Moodie:
Hi, my name is Cindy Moodie, and I work in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin Children’s Hospital in the Division of Pediatric Pulmonology. I will be assisting Becki Tribby as the administrative coordinator for the course. I am available to assist you with any concerns you may have or technical assistance you may need. You can call me at any time, and if I can’t help you, I will refer you on to someone who can.

Candace Dreier:
I’m Candace Dreier, and I’m a home care respiratory therapist with UW Regional Services. My role in this course is as an instructor for the transition sections. What I hope to accomplish in this course is to share some information regarding children who are technology dependent and how transitions affect their lives and their families’ lives. I have a lot of experience in this area. I’ve been working in home care for quite a number of years now, and part of my role is to provide discharge training for parents and for home care nurses and other community providers, but also to provide home visits and other home care services to families.

I go into the homes and see what’s working and what isn’t regarding their home equipment and home therapies, and help them to arrange things so that it’s working better for them.

Rick Kittell:
Hi, my name is Rick Kittell. I’m a clinical pharmacist here at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, and I primarily work with children and adults with chronic disease, such as cystic fibrosis and renal disease among others. The importance of adherence, which is what I’m going to be talking about during this course is that whenever I talk to patients and I’m trying to evaluate their drug therapy, I need to be confident that they’re taking their medications in a manner which is both efficacious and safe.

So are they taking it on a regular basis? Are they taking it the way the doctors that originally described to them? So when we can become confident that a patient is taking a medication appropriately and adhering to the therapy as prescribed by the doctor, then we can make better recommendations as a result of this assessment to changes in the patients’ therapy for more appropriate and desired outcomes.

Timothy Wolf:
My name is Tim Wolf, and I’m a pharmacist here at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics. I’m a former member of the Pediatric Pulmonary Center team, and you will see me in some of the case study videos that are included in this course. I think the information that you learn from these case studies will be helpful in applying the information that you learn from this course.

Mary Schroth:
Hello, I’m Mary Shroth. I’m a pediatric pulmonologist at the University of Wisconsin. I’m a physician that takes care of children with pediatric pulmonary problems. So I see children who have asthma, cystic fibrosis, who are born prematurely and have lung disease, and also children with neuromuscular disorders or any kind of airway problems like noisy breathing.
I’ll be teaching a lesson on teams and healthcare delivery. I will focus on the team members, what makes up a healthcare delivery team, how they work together, and how that team works with families and children. What I would like you to leave with is a better appreciation of how healthcare teams work together with families and things that you can think about in a little bit different way than maybe you’ve thought about before. There are many nuances that I hope you pick up that you can apply to your experiences as you continue to provide care in the future.

Mary Marcus:
Hi, I’m Mary Marcus. I’m a clinical nutritionist with the Pediatric Pulmonary Center. In this course, I will be involved with the public policy and advocacy modules and the adherence module. I try to bring my own work experience and experiences with working with patients and families into this course.

My background is in clinical nutrition, but over the years I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in many different projects and activities through the Pediatric Pulmonary Center. I really enjoy teaching, and I’m looking forward to this experience of teaching from a distance. And I’m really looking forward to working with all of you.