Abstracts

Rationale: In 2013, the Ontario (Canada) Provincial Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) established a Task Force which named the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) as a district epilepsy center. Thus, CHEO set out to develop and implement a dedicated Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (EMU) with the goal of maximizing epilepsy care for those who may be surgical candidates as well as those who required diagnosis or medication management. Using provincially established guidelines (1) our multidisciplinary working group reviewed equipment and technology requirements, room set up, staffing and training needs, as well as addressing any safety concerns in advance. . We launched our 2 bed EMU in May 2014. Two years post go-live, we felt it was time to reflect. A retrospective survey was created to obtain feedback from families about their experience at the CHEO EMU Methods: A nurse coordinator was assigned and under her guidance several quality and safety processes were set in place.These included a triage process and a REDcap data base to obtain internal data and to also manage provincial reporting requirements. Evaluation and efficacy were constantly assessed and processes adjusted accordingly. Several cancellations due to nursing shortage issues resulted in the establishment of a dedicated nursing pool in our second year. Recently we launched the aforementioned survey using REDcap to seek family feedback on our processes. Results: In the past 2 years we have seen 152 visits with an average length of stay of 58.4 hours . 81 families agreed to participate in the EMU survey. To date we have received 21 responses. Approximately 30% ( 2) of our patients did not have any events. Early survey results indicate that 76% of our families felt the EMU stay was worthwhile, while 24% did not, with the major reason cited as events not captured during EMU stay. Conclusions: Our EMU has had a major impact on diagnosis and treatment of pediatric epilepsy in our region, in particular for those patients who had events during admission. . We have identified a group of patients in whom events were not captured and the next steps involve a detailed clinical review of this group. Understanding the contributing factors will lead to a greater efficiency of our EMU and the highest quality care for our patients with epilepsy. References: 1. Epilepsy Implementation Task Force ( 2014) Provincial Guidelines for the Mangement of Epilepsy in Adults and Children , CCSO 2. Aziz,A.S, Doja,A., Pohl, D. Sell, E., Whiting, S. Epilepsy monitoring in a Disctict Epilepsy Centre in Ottawa Canada-1 Year Review ( 2015 Funding: n/a