The Franciscan Children’s Hospital
The Franciscan Children’s Hospital and Rehabilitation Center is a 100-bed facility providing both acute pediatric services and pediatric rehabilitation. The Franciscan also has a large outpatient rehabilitation service and a special education school for multiple handicapped children. The Hospital runs a ventilator unit for children no longer requiring acute care and has broad expertise in physical rehabilitation, as well as speech and language assessment and therapy, psychological and neuropsychological assessment, dentistry and corrective surgery. The McLean Unit is the only psychiatric inpatient unit at Franciscan. While the Hospital campus is urban, located close to two Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority stations and several bus lines, there are two large outdoor recreation areas available to the patients of the psychiatric unit, as well as a new full gymnasium and a plan to build a therapeutic pool.

Residents have a required rotation at the McLean Child and Adolescent Program at the Franciscan Children’s Hospital Inpatient Service for four months in their second year. The Franciscan is located five miles from McLean Hospital and about three miles from Massachusetts General Hospital. The McLean Inpatient Services is a discreet 20-bed unit managed by McLean and with psychiatry, psychology, and social work positions staffed by McLean. The inpatient unit has separate programs for children ages 5 to 12 and for adolescents. The unit has the capacity to treat co-morbid medical conditions and has a specialty track for developmentally disordered youth who are in psychiatric crisis. It has established an acute residential program for latency age children to provide a continuum of care with the inpatient unit. The acute residential program also accepts admissions directly from the Boston metropolitan area.

Residents provide admission workups, including the psychiatric history, present illness, family history, inventory of strengths, formulation, diagnosis and initial treatment plan. Residents also perform physical exams on admission. The psychiatric workup and ongoing treatment by the resident are supervised by the unit’s attending psychiatrists. Pediatrics supervision and consultation is provided, including a pediatric examination of all new admissions and follow-up of all patients with ongoing medical needs by the residents and attending psychiatry staff. Pediatric subspecialists available for consultation include pediatric neurology, neuropsychology and psychological evaluation. The hospital has a pediatrician on duty at all times who is available to the unit and to the child residents for emergency consultation.

Specialized psychiatric consultations for complex pediatric psychopharmacology, adolescent substance abuse and trauma are provided by McLean Hospital child and adolescent psychiatry staff. At Franciscan, McLean also operates the Kennedy Hope Academy, a residential school providing special education and state-of-the-art treatment for students ages 5 to 18, who have mental retardation and/or autistic spectrum disorders as well as major psychiatric difficulties. It features applied behavioral analysis, individual/family/group therapies, occupational and speech and language therapy, social pragmatics and special education.