Family as Faculty

Our Goals

Family as Faculty (FAF) is a group of family members who serve as teachers to hospital staff. FAF is composed of parents of children who receive their care at Nationwide Children's Hospital. Most of the children have special health care needs and their parents are committed to helping staff better understand the unique needs and feelings of families.

FAF has two chief goals: to teach the principles of family-centered care through telling their stories, and to provide tools for developing effective family-staff partnerships.

Family as Faculty accomplishes these goals by making the elements of family-centered care real for staff through personal stories and by offering ideas for working with families of children with special needs.

FAF is fully supported by the hospital. The hospital recognizes that parents are the constants in their children’s lives and are the experts regarding their own families.  Thus, they are uniquely prepared to be our staff’s teachers about family-centered care.  
Parents are provided training and assistance in developing their presentations, and have the opportunity to work with and support each other through this process.

Our Story

The FAF story began in 2001 with a small group of parents who came together to talk about ways that they could help healthcare workers provide the best care for their families. They realized that by telling their stories and sharing their unique experiences they could give hospital staff a glimpse into the lives of the families that they serve. As these parents began to prepare their talks - often poignant, always powerful - they recognized some common themes in the message they wanted to share with staff:

• Children are children all the time, even when they are sick.
• Children are part of families, which have interests, activities and priorities beyond the medical environment.
• The best care for our children comes from a collaborative effort and trust between families and healthcare professionals.