Hospital creates calming pediatric space with nurse’s farm-inspired murals

Neighbors taking care of neighbors

It’s one of the hallmarks of community hospitals. Just as your neighborhood is familiar and comforting to you, so should be a pediatric care area in a hospital. MidHudson Regional Hospital, a member of WMCHealth, is creating a calming, neighborhood environment with mural art from one of its own, very talented nurse practitioners in the recently opened Maria Fareri Children’s Healthcare Services.

It is important for pediatric patients, and their parents, to feel a sense of security and calmness when they enter a hospital. So it is no surprise that MidHudson Regional Hospital’s new pediatric areas are being transformed with brightly colored murals. “This gives our patients a warm, comforting feeling,” says Jenny Sung, MD, the hospital’s pediatrics medical director.  Now when a child and their parent(s) arrive at the new pediatric emergency room or the inpatient pediatric care area, they are welcomed into a kid-friendly, calming environment.    

Guidance from world-renowned experts

WMCHealth network’s world-renowned Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital located in Valhalla, the Hudson Valley’s only acute care children’s hospital, oversees the children’s healthcare services in Poughkeepsie. Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital has a long tradition of creating themed neighborhoods within the walls of the hospital and using art and images in the hallways and rooms to create peaceful, calming environments that promote healing and security. Some examples of the neighborhoods’ themes found at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital include sailing, literature and athletics. So it was natural that MidHudson Regional Hospital was going to create a neighborhood theme that would reflect the area’s history and culture for its new pediatric inpatient area and new pediatric emergency room services. 

Selecting a neighborhood theme

MidHudson Regional Hospital asked its workforce to select the theme that would transform the Maria Fareri Children’s Healthcare Services area at MidHudson Regional Hospital into a neighborhood. Employees suggested many interesting and creative choices, and one theme continually rose to the top: farming. During the selection process it became clear that many employees enjoy tending to their own vegetable gardens, planting flowers and some also care for livestock. So, farming was selected to honor the rich agricultural heritage of Dutchess County. The next step was to create a magical farming neighborhood for all to enjoy.   

Transforming into a neighborhood

To create this whimsical world, the talents of Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Elaine Suderio-Tirone and her daughter Viviane were secured. Suderio-Tirone and her daughter transformed blank spaces into brightly painted artwork depicting a friendly farming neighborhood, complete with fields and orchards, colorful flowers, cattle and horses, and rabbits and butterflies, among other locally found animals and plants.

Suderio-Tirone, a board-certified family nurse practitioner who has a doctorate in nursing practice, enjoyed painting the engaging wallscapes with her 16-year-old daughter. “Pediatric care is my passion — I just love caring for children — and the farm scenes we’ve painted add to the pediatric care we provide at MidHudson Regional Hospital,” says Suderio-Tirone, who has specialized in pediatrics for more than 20 years.

“The beautiful outdoor scenes we painted offer a soothing, playful environment and provide an important connection to our community,” she adds. “At the nurses’ station, for instance, we painted lots of flowers, and we have honey bees busily walking on them, pollinating them. I love that this ties into Poughkeepsie’s city seal — a beehive surrounded by flying bees — because Poughkeepsie has been a beehive of activity for centuries.”

MidHudson Regional Hospital also painted the new pediatric emergency room, and will soon paint the pediatric procedure room and eventually each pediatric patient room.

“We’ve found that art like this reduces stress and increases children’s feelings of well-being,” she says. “Studies show paintings like ours can also improve clinical outcomes.”

Creating the paintings is also a stress reliever for Suderio-Tirone, she says. “I enjoy painting. It’s an avenue for me to step away from my professional life — although in this case, it supports my professional life because it supports the children I care for.”

Suderio-Tirone says she wants the Hudson Valley community to know that infants, children and adolescents, from birth to age 18, who go to Maria Fareri Children’s Healthcare Services at MidHudson Regional Hospital will receive high quality medical care provided by pediatric and adolescent medicine specialists. And, patients will have access to the latest medical treatments and technology — in a caring, neighborly environment.

A pediatric emergency room and inpatient care services are now open at MidHudson Regional Hospital, in association with Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital, the Hudson Valley’s only acute care children’s hospital. Both organizations are members of the Westchester Medical Center Health Network (WMCHealth). The new services are called Maria Fareri Children’s Healthcare Services at MidHudson Regional Hospital.

The new emergency room and inpatient services will help meet the healthcare needs of local children from birth to age 18, with care delivered by pediatricians and emergency medicine specialists, along with pediatrics-trained nurses with recent clinical experience at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital. The new emergency room can be accessed by calling 911, or arrival at the hospital’s main emergency department entrance.

About MidHudson Regional Hospital, a member of the Westchester Medical Center Health Network

MidHudson Regional Hospital provides advanced medical care in the Mid-Hudson Valley.  This 243-bed hospital, located in Poughkeepsie, New York, provides local residents with acute care services and direct access to the renowned care of the Hudson Valley’s largest healthcare network.  Services include the area’s first Level II Trauma Center, Total Joint Replacement, the Center for Robotic Surgery, the Redl Center for Cancer Care and Maria Fareri Children’s Healthcare Services at MidHudson Hudson Regional Hospital.  To learn more about MidHudson Regional Hospital and the vital services it provides to residents of the Mid-Hudson Valley, visit MidHudsonRegional.org or follow the hospital at Facebook.com/MidHudsonRegional and Twitter.com/MHRH.

About Westchester Medical Center Health Network

The Westchester Medical Center Health Network (WMCHealth) is a 1,700-bed healthcare system headquartered in Valhalla, New York, with 10 hospitals on eight campuses spanning 6,200 square miles of the Hudson Valley. WMCHealth employs more than 12,000 people and has nearly 3,000 attending physicians. From Level 1, Level 2 and Pediatric Trauma Centers, the region’s only acute care children’s hospital, an academic medical center, several community hospitals, dozens of specialized institutes and centers, skilled nursing, assisted living facilities, homecare services and one of the largest mental health systems in New York State, today WMCHealth is the pre-eminent provider of integrated healthcare in the Hudson Valley. For more information about WMCHealth, visit WMCHealth.org.