Studer Family Children’s Hospital has a SEAL team — not one that executes military missions, but one that helps physicians, nurses and other hospital employees prepare for high-risk, low-frequency situations.
The project — which stands for Simulating Emergency Action for Life — represents some of the inspiration hospital President Jason Foland, MD, has drawn from the armed forces, he said on the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast.”
The Pensacola, Fla.-based hospital is one of nine owned by St. Louis-based Ascension in Florida; the other eight are adult hospitals. Studer Family Children’s Hospital also is about 20 miles from Naval Air Station Pensacola, home of the Navy’s Blue Angels. Dr. Foland compared the city’s relationship to the aerobatic flight team with one that another community might have with a professional sports franchise. And in partnering with the base — having members of the military visit the hospital, for example — he noticed how intensely the Blue Angels rehearse and execute.
“The foundation is preparation,” he said. “In critical care and acute care hospital pediatrics, every case is different, so we train continuously for the range of scenarios we may face. That readiness is built through rigorous, ongoing certification like pediatric advanced life support and cardiac advanced life support, so our teams can perform with precision when it matters most.”
The mission of the hospital’s SEAL team, which launched in 2019 while Dr. Foland was chief medical officer of Studer Family Children’s Hospital, has since expanded.
“It was so successful that we took it outside the hospital, and we now train the entire Ascension Florida market, all eight [other] hospitals,” Dr. Foland said. “We’ve had over 900 professionals trained in that program this year.”
Taking another cue from the Blue Angels, Studer Family Children’s Hospital has imported a “flat” leadership structure.
“[In the Blue Angels], anybody of any rank can raise their hand and say, ‘I’m concerned about something; there’s a safety issue,'” Dr. Foland said. “I know that’s a common theme amongst high-performing elite teams, and we try to emulate that here. We’re pretty proud of the fact that we have a team in place — doctors to nurses to techs — where anybody can stop the process in the name of safety.”
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