Jennifer Arnold, the doctor who trains parents of troubled newborns before they go home

Without an instruction book and with the own fear of the responsibility that a small life depends on oneself. This is how the beginning of paternity is faced. Only those who have been through it know that strange feeling. If everything goes well with a pregnancy without problems, having a beautiful delivery and leaving the hospital with a healthy baby in your arms, there is no guarantee that, in the event of any slightest anomaly, one will run to the pediatrician's office.

One more cry, eat less, sleep more, rest little…. There is no more sensible manual than a mother and father who have been previously. But there are situations in which the experience of a first-time parent is useless.. Since, of the pediatric patients discharged, one in five suffers some type of complication upon returning home. For this reason, leaving the hospital trained to act is of great help.

Ready.Sim.Go. is a training program with pediatric simulators, a finalist for the Fundación MAPFRE Awards for Social Innovation, created for this purpose. Behind this platform there is a great story of overcoming. A neonatologist who knows first-hand the needs of a patient with these characteristics and who can apply the vision of a medical professional to cover them.

Jennifer Arnold is an example of self-improvement at all levels. He wanted to study Medicine and specialize in Pediatrics by Dr. Steven E. Kopits, who inspired him while he was in college. “He is a passionate human being, so dedicated to the care of his patients that I admire him very much.. And he was really the reason I wanted to go into medicine: to help children.”

What is special about Jennifer Arnold?

In a way, she is giving back the help she needed since birth.. This is how he came to Neonatology. “I wanted to be able to take care of babies from the beginning of their lives and hopefully help them lead happy and healthy lives”. she didn't have it easy. From his mother's womb, he went to an ICU for a series of respiratory complications.

Arnold has a rare type of dwarfism called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia, Strudwick type.. Without this condition defining her, she has made her strong, not without testing her throughout her life.. “I am very passionate about being a part of raising awareness for diversity and equal inclusion in the medical profession”. Claim and fight so that your illness is not a brake on anyone's job aspirations, but even more so in the health field. “Because I think it's one of the fields that has been slow to realize the value and benefits that people with disabilities can bring to healthcare.”

I am very passionate about being a part of raising awareness for diversity and equal inclusion in the medical profession.

The social judgment to which people with his disease are subjected makes him bring out his critical side. “It's a little ironic since as doctors our goal is to help people who have disabilities and chronic health conditions, whether they are life-threatening or just life-altering, and yet there has been a bias for a long time against the inclusion of people with disabilities”.

It hasn't been easy. But never, he insists, has he stopped trusting that he could do it. Step by Step. Neither the 35 surgeries he had to undergo in childhood due to dysplasia, nor the rejection of almost 30 applications for admission to the university. He only got two yeses. “Which is quite common in medicine because it is a very competitive field.”

To opt for a place in an American university, only grades are not enough, you must have a good cover letter. “You have to write a personal statement, an essay about why you want to dedicate yourself to Medicine. Then, after sending it, you receive invitations to go to an interview; which is the final step before they accept you.”

He confesses that he turned around to find the exact key. “I wasn't sure about the rejections, but I suspected it might be related to my disability”. He explains that in his essay he argued that “the reason I wanted to go into medicine was that I had benefited from it as a patient all my life.”

The reason I wanted to go into medicine was because I had benefited as a patient from it all my life.

Her dream was to be a surgeon, although later inspiration led her to Neonatology. He began with a degree in Biology and Psychology at the University of Miami in Florida. Later, he completed his medical degree at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.

After training for seven years in immersive simulation, he is now the director of the 'Immersive Design Systems' program at Boston Children's Hospital and directs the Ready.Sim.Go Simulation Program.. “I love educating and I fell in love with the technique, the tool, the advantages that simulation provides for training. So I got involved very early in my career and got to run different simulation programs at different hospitals in the US.”

A great vocation towards the care of babies

He recognizes that his vocation is to provide quality of life and security to new families after the birth of the baby. In each explanation there is not only passion for his work, but a deep understanding of what he is talking about. “I know how difficult it was for my parents to handle situations when they took me home from the hospital.. It's so terrifying that all you want is the best for your child.”

The platform for which Arnold is responsible seeks to train the families of the babies by providing them with basic clinical knowledge and skills to care for the little ones at home after medical discharge. “We started with a pilot project when I was at Texas Children's Hospital and developed a training program for very high-risk babies who were going home with a tracheostomy and a ventilator to breathe,” he recalls of the beginnings.. “Little ones have long-term complications that challenge their families and can even experience life-threatening emergencies when they're back home.”

I know how difficult it was for my parents to handle situations when they took me home from the hospital.

Aware of the terror of facing a situation in which one must save the life of his son, Arnold is committed to preparing for any eventuality.. “They will be the first to respond”. And through the platform, they are provided not only with how to do it, but also with the assurance that it is being done right.. “You have to save your son's life. And I thought it was crazy that we didn't give them a chance to practice those skills before they went home and not have to do it with their own child.. This is how I got involved in developing simulation training for patients and families.”

The teaching they propose is both theoretical and practical, through simulations that allow you to apply what you have learned in a comfortable and safe environment.. The most practical part is carried out on mannequins, and Immersive Design Systems (IDS) works in its elaboration.. “We've been developing all this equipment, but we're hoping to get a manikin that's more user-friendly, so we can help train more patients and families and more hospitals will adopt this type of training.”

The project has high expansion expectations. It has been set as a goal to reach in 2025 the training of a hundred hospital clinicians with the simulation and to involve half a thousand families of patients.

Arnold says that IDS is a program at Boston Children's Hospital that includes medical experts, nurses, educators, and engineers.. His research has used innovative technologies for more than 20 years to optimize medical care and the training of his staff.. And this aspect is what has been recognized this week in Spain by the Mapfre Foundation.

For this reason, it will become part of the Red Innova. A community of entrepreneurs where the exchange of expert knowledge is encouraged, which allows access to different channels to promote their projects, which will help them to make themselves known. “At the moment we are only focused on the US, but I am aware that it could be very useful to many parents and clinicians around the world.”

Jennifer Arnold, an informative television star

She also has a family. She met her husband Bill Klein when she was 10 years old in the hospital. They have almost no secrets from the world, because a large part of their life is broadcast through the American reality show The Little Couple (available in Spain through DKISS).. Since 2009, here is a reflection of what the family life of both of them is like, and of their two adoptive children, Will and Zoey.

The small steps that Arnold has taken have served to jump over big obstacles and serve as an example for many. For this reason, in addition to practicing medicine, for which she has been awarded the Ray E.. Helfer Award for Innovation in Medical Education from the Pediatric Academic Association, has been recognized as one of the sought-after voices in inspirational speaking engagements.

“I look forward to using my experiences as a patient, as a doctor, and even on television to raise awareness about disability, diversity, equity, and inclusion.”. It all relates to me, my experience as a person with a disability and a medical condition.. Todo me ha dado forma a lo que soy como persona».