Autism Spectrum Ambassador Program

Overview

The investigators are evaluating the implementation and the effectiveness of a medical student staffed support program (ASAP) for children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder coming into Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital for a medical procedure. The ASAP program involves training and assigning a medical student as an Ambassador to help advocate for the special needs of a child with ASD. This study is designed to compare patient satisfaction of children and families who are assigned an Ambassador to those who are not assigned an Ambassador during the procedure. The secondary objectives are to measure overall medical student satisfaction with the program, medical student career interests before and after participation, and medical student comfort level interacting with children with ASD before and after participation.

The Autism Spectrum Ambassador Program (ASAP) is a medical student staffed program designed to improve the experience for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder coming into the Children's Hospital for a day procedure involving anesthesia. This program will pair an interested and trained medical student with a family whose child is scheduled for an outpatient procedure and who is identified as possibly needing special accommodations to improve cooperation and procedure tolerance. Patients will be identified using the Anesthesia clinic's schedule via PowerChart, consented at the pre-operative anesthesia clinic visit, and enrolled in our program by study personnel. Once enrolled, families will be asked to complete a confidential survey that will identify areas that can be accommodated on the procedure day. Students will gain access to these survey results, contact the family at least 1 day prior to the procedure. A brief discussion will take place to review the child's history and survey results. The student will then create a written, personalized Accommodation Plan to be distributed to personnel and the family. The student will meet the family at the hospital and accompany the family check in until the patient is in the post anesthesia recovery unit. Students will be trained to chart a child's Accommodation Plan for each member of the treatment team which will be distributed by the student with ample time before the procedure. This accommodation plan will alert each treatment team member including surgical nursing, anesthesia, registration, and to the extent possible surgeons, to what accommodations will be needed to improve the experience of the child. Students will be trained to assist with accommodations by communicating on the family's behalf to hospital personnel to include surgical nursing, anesthesia, registration, and to the extent possible surgeons, among others. To the extent possible, the investigators hope that having a student advocate, educate staff on the procedure day, and implement changes as needed will improve patient satisfaction with the experience and improve the ease with which a procedure can be carried out for a child with ASD. Students will also be queried as to the experience and survey data will be used to improve the program over time. Training will be completed so that all members of the treatment team will be aware of the program and aware of the possible accommodations. Treatment team members will be provided additional training to enhance the success of the ASAP program and all treatment team members will be encouraged to work together for the best possible outcome for all patients. Treatment team services include: surgical nursing, anesthesia, registration, and to the extent possible the surgeons involved in the care of these children.