Spotlight on Pediatric Emergency Care Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2005 Focus on Pediatric Care: A New Year Happy New Year! The New Year is traditionally a time of reflection. It's a time to think about what's important; about what should be prioritized among the many competing demands we face at work; and about how best to integrate our priorities so we can meet both work and personal goals. Just before Thanksgiving, I received an e-mail from a prospective client in which she wrote: "I have to say we are all running faster and in more directions than I've ever seen before. I'm hoping someone hands me some turkey as I run by this week...." I love this quote! It embodies the tension most of us feel in today's busy times. My experience is that it reflects most of our realities: everything is happening faster and faster. We have less and less time to process events and conversations; and more and more pressure to meet more and more demands that deluge us from every direction. I hope that, somehow, we can all take a breath, slow down and finally enjoy some turkey. Some of you may be familiar with the work of Stephen Covey, including his very popular and excellent "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People." For those of you who appreciated this work, I would highly encourage you to take a look at his just-released book, "The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness." One of the fundamental elements of his work is how we need to take individual and collective responsibility for deciding exactly what is truly important, and then put our time and energies towards accomplishing what we identified. This is a great paradigm to consider as we approach the New Year, especially at the departmental and organizational levels. It is at these levels where we must ask: what is our commitment to enhancing emergency services for the children in our communities? Is it an idea that's been on the back burner for some time? Are organizational, competitive or community pressures suggesting that NOW is the time to move to the front burner a commitment to improving care? If so, know that such improvement requires a real conscious effort to translate our intentions into concrete actions. And there is no better time than the present, at the start of a brand new year, to move forward--to turn intentions into actions and positively impact the children in our communities. Special Notice: Dr. Petrack will be offering a course on Saturday, March 5, 2005 during the upcoming American College of Emergency Physician's Spring Congress in Orlando, Florida. The course, sponsored by the Pediatric Section, is called Enhancing Emergency Services for Children. In addition to discussing this topic, Dr. Petrack will use an organizational development tool with which your institution may gain an understanding of the particular forces that may help or block the achievement of its goals of improved pediatric emergency care. For more information, or to register, please see http://meetings.acep.org/meetings/SpringCongress. About Our Organization Created in 2003, Petrack Consulting is dedicated to helping physician and hospital leadership bring excellence to emergency services for children. We work collaboratively to fully understand our client’s needs, and then address programmatic initiatives with measurable outcomes. Our unique background in pediatric emergency medicine, administrative medicine, and organization development allows us to create uniquely effective solutions for enhancing emergency services for children.