Prior to Children's Mercy, Barb worked for six years in a surgical and trauma ICU as both a staff and head nurse. From there she moved to El Paso Texas and began working as a staff nurse in a neonatal intensive care unit. She did this for three years before moving back to Kansas City and beginning her career here at Children's Mercy in the Intensive Care Unit. In our ICN, she has been a staff, transport, and charge nurse. In addition, Barb began the ECMO program here at Children's Mercy in 1986, for which she has received many awards. She was the coordinator of ECMO until 2012. She is still currently part of the ECMO leadership team. She is a Clinical Nurse Specialist, in the ICN today. In this role, she is on numerous multidisciplinary committees concerned with safety and quality improvement for both the unit and hospital. I, unfortunately, have not been at Children's Mercy long enough to have worked alongside Barb at the bedside. I have only known her through her leadership roles in the ICN. She has both her MSN, post-masters PNP, is a Clinical Nurse Specialist, in addition to being certified in Neonatal Intensive Care.
From the moment I met her, until this present day, I have had nothing but respect and awe of her for all she has accomplished in her nursing career thus far. She is who I aspire to be like as a nurse. She has impeccable attention to detail, in addition to being very intelligent. When I come across any nursing practice issue/problem, she is the first person I want to discuss it with. She is approachable, and a great listener who will talk through multiple scenarios with you. She investigates our incident reports in the ICN. She does this in a non-accusatory manner in which people feel comfortable discussing incidents with her. She is the champion of our PICC line team. She teaches the nurses who are selected as line nurses to place these lines, peripheral arterial lines, and how to do the sterile dressing changes. She is a very patient person. This year, she has been instrumental in having those nurses (and herself) learn how to place lines via ultrasound. She would never expect a nurse to do something that she herself could not accomplish. She is constantly looking at ways to improve our programs here at Mercy- whether that be how to improve our CLABSI rates, or how our ECMO team is staffed. She developed our regional therapeutic hypothermia program and continues to oversee it. Our families who have patients that are in need of this service are fortunate that this program exists. There is no other treatment for those patients.
She has been nominated for many awards, including March of Dimes Nurse of the Year x3, twice being a finalist and this past year winning for Advance Practice, Magnet Nurse of the Year, and Nursing: The Heart of Healthcare. She has been the recipient of Clinical Excellence in Nursing (twice- once as a researcher), and Hero's In Healthcare. She is a member of several organizations- ELSO (Excellence in Life Support Organization), ELSO award subcommittee co-chair, ELSO award reviewer, ELSO logistics and education committee, Missouri Organization of Nurse Leaders, National Association of Neonatal Nurses, and Association of Women's Health Obstetric and Neonatal Nursing.
Barb has been published in several journals and textbooks including The Journal of Extra-Corporeal Technology, Journal of Pediatric Surgery x2, Pediatrics x4, Neonatal Network, Journal of Perinatology, Journal of Perinatal and Neonatal Nursing, Advances in Neonatal Care x2 and Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. There are also numerous papers she has written and presented at conferences. She was recently featured in a web article for Children's Mercy about a child she took care of on ECMO almost 30 years prior. It's heartwarming to hear her impact on that family and the stories told of her nursing care.
When I think of our ICN and the ways in which it has changed over the years, I think of both the ECMO and our therapeutic hypothermia programs. These were both Barb's creations, that together, have helped hundreds of infants over the years. Our ICN and Children's Mercy would not be the same without Barb Haney. We are so lucky and very proud to have her here at Children's Mercy.
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Every year on his birthday, the 29-year-old former patient's parents have told the story of his birth. This story, which has become famous in their household, is how this child became seriously ill after being born, and just hours later was on life support.
"After I had him, all of a sudden we realized something was wrong," said his mother. It was his lungs. He wasn't breathing properly and would need emergency transport to Children's Mercy in Kansas City. The doctor brought him back into the room so she could see him before they left. "At that point, no one knew what was going to happen, and she wanted to make sure that I would get to see my son." It was too foggy to go by helicopter, so he was transported by ambulance for the nearly 100-mile journey from the hospital in Trenton, Missouri, where he was born. The doctor who delivered the patient went in the ambulance, manually breathing for him with a bag valve mask. "She knew that was the only way to keep him alive," said his mother, who had to remain in the hospital recovering from a cesarean section. His father followed the ambulance to Children's Mercy. When they arrived, he was faced with a decision he wasn't prepared for. "The doctor came in to talk to me for the first time and asked me about putting him on the ECMO machine. Of course, we had no idea what that was," he said. ECMO, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, is the highest level of life support. ECMO doesn't cure illness. Rather, it does the work of the heart and lungs for you, allowing the body to rest and hopefully, overcome the underlying issue. His father was told that he had about a 10% chance of survival. "We've got to do this. Let's do it," he decided.
For the next three days, the patient's father drove between the hospital in Trenton, where his wife was recovering, and Children's Mercy, where his son was on ECMO. "It was surreal," he said about his newborn son being on life support. "Here's this little baby that I have no connection to in a way because I didn't get to hold him or anything." But he was supported and encouraged by the providers caring for his son. "They were wonderful," he said, recalling the many positive conversations and interactions that kept him in good spirits. After three days, his mother was finally able to travel to Children's Mercy to be with him, but because of the machine, he still couldn't be held. "All I could do was put my pinky in his hand," she said. The patient's father had to return to work while she remained at the hospital, sleeping at the nearby Ronald McDonald house at night.
"Families whose babies are on ECMO, their babies are dying," said Barb Haney, ICN Clinical Nurse Specialist, ECMO Clinical Leadership Team. "You don't know if it's going to work until they get on (the machine) and are stable and then you don't know until they get off if they are going to survive," Barb said. And so, his mother sat praying next to her baby each day, her pinky in his small hand. Barb was the ECMO coordinator in 1990 when this patient arrived. The program was just three years old and only treated a handful of patients each year. "If you needed something in the middle of the night, you called Barb," said Debbie Newton, director of the current ECMO program. "When there was a child on ECMO, Barb was there." At the time, the program only treated babies in the neonatal ICU. "Families are on a roller coaster, their emotions are all over the place, up and down," said Barb, who became very close with the families and was intimately involved with the program. "That was really my whole life for many years." She was with the family throughout the patient's stay, making sure that they were taken care of.
His mother recalls the meaningful things that Barb and the team did for her, from constant updates, to finding someone to remove her C-section staples so she wouldn't have to leave the hospital to drive back to Trenton. "They just took such good care of me," she said. Those memories have become tightly connected to the story, creating positive impressions of what would have otherwise been a parent's nightmare. "You're just doing your job, you don't know the impact that you had," said Barb.
"They told us that if everything went well, he'd be in the hospital six weeks or longer," said his mother. But after 11 days, Barb delivered the good news: he was doing fine and was ready to be released. The parents were educated about how to monitor him at home and the importance of follow-up services. Babies that have been on ECMO or have spent a lot of time in the NICU are at a risk for certain complications, including hearing problems and learning disabilities. "But he didn't have any of those issues," said his mother, noting that the patient had a very healthy childhood and grew up without any major health problems. "He's been our miracle baby, and that's what we call him." And so, the story told each year that begins with an emergency transport on a foggy night, concludes with a very happy ending.
As Barb Haney's name became synonymous over the years with the story of his first days, the former patient started to understand her impact on his family. "Of course, he had never known Barb because he was such a little thing," said his mother. "But we talked about her every birthday. He heard it for years because we had such a wonderful experience at Children's Mercy. He felt like he knew her." The impression was so strong that last year, he decided to track her down for a surprise reunion with his family. "I wanted Barb to know that even after all these years she's had a longstanding impact," he said. Knowing how important she and Children's Mercy were to his parents, he thought it would be the perfect Christmas present. He started asking around and discovered a colleague that had ties to Children's Mercy and Debbie Newton. "Somehow an email got to me asking if I wanted to do something to honor Barb Haney," said Newton, who connected with him to arrange the reunion. He wanted to make it a surprise, but his mother had said that if she ever got to meet Barb again, she'd want to give her something special. He decided that it was more important to let her prepare than to surprise her. "I just wanted to make sure that my parents got everything out of it that they wanted," he said.
Last December, they met for lunch at a local restaurant. The family- both parents, the patient, and his wife - were seated when Debbie Newton and Barb arrived. It had been nearly 30 years since they last saw each other, and Barb recognized his mother immediately. Over lunch, all the stories were told again. "It was a very good feeling to finally put a face with the name I've heard so many times," he said. "It was lovely, they were very grateful, and their stories were just so crystal clear like it just happened yesterday," said Debbie Newton. "We all kind of got teary and choked up," said Barb, who listened to the patient's mother recall all the things that she and the team did for her that meant so much during that difficult time. "It's just so humbling that I've had the opportunity to be a part of their lives."
For the patient, hearing the story his whole life has given him an appreciation that has followed him into his career as a Physician Alignment Executive at Cerner. "The experience (my parents) had at that time - that I've been told over and over again every year, coming up on my 30th birthday, is exactly why I do what I do at Cerner," said the patient, who feels his family's experience helps him build relationships with clinicians. "I know how big of an impact a provider can have on a family."
The reunion was an inspiration for Debbie Newton, who knew of Barb's impact from her long tenure with the program but was moved by witnessing the gratitude of the parents. "It was such a good example for me for why we do what we do," she said. The current ECMO program has grown significantly since he was there, now treating around 50 patients per year, including older kids and teenagers. Barb shares the family's story and their reunion with people she works with and incorporates it into training. She hopes it will inspire others that what may seem like small gestures can lead to a positive experience and a lifetime of memories. "You just don't know the words, the looks, the touches, the little things like a glass of water or a simple explanation, you just don't know the impact that that has for the entire life of someone else," said Barb. And that special gift that the patient's mother wanted to give to Barb? A carved wooden angel statue, now sitting on Barb's mantle at home. A treasured reminder of her lasting impact and the inspiration for a family's story.