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Since finishing her fellowship in child psychiatry,
Paula Rauch MD, chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)
Child Psychiatry Consultation Service, has devoted her career to caring
for children and families facing life-threatening illness. Recognizing
that no parent with cancer should worry alone about how best to support
his or her child and that no child should become an invisible sufferer
during a parent's illness, Dr. Rauch founded Parenting at a Challenging
Time (PACT). PACT is a unique parent guidance program at MGH that
provides individual and group parenting support by expert child psychiatrists
and psychologists for cancer patients, their spouses and children.
Dr. Rauch's warmth and compassion are instantly apparent to both her
patients and their families. She is an intuitive caregiver whose quiet
nature quickly calms a terrified child. Her strength of character
and devotion inspired one man grieving the loss of his wife to say,
"Dr. Rauch is the source for much of our hope as a family; not the
false hope that all would end well, but the real, enduring hope that
she and our team of doctors would never, ever abandon us." Another
man whose wife was losing her battle against a rare form of pancreatic
cancer recalls sitting at his wife's hospital bed when Dr. Rauch,
who had been involved in the woman's care for years, walked into the
room. "She came over and sat on the floor next to me," he recalls,
"just looking understandingly up at me – withdrawn from the
privacy of me and my dying wife, yet very present and willing to listen."
A popular teacher, supervisor and mentor, Dr. Rauch is highly respected
in her field. One colleague recently said of her, "I have been an
oncology nurse for twenty years and have seen the devastating effect
the diagnosis of cancer can have on families with young or school-age
children – it is a comfort to be able to refer people to Dr.
Rauch, knowing that she will really help them." A psychiatrist and
longtime colleague wrote, "Paula always has the answer for horrible
problems, such as, 'I'm 32 years old. How do I tell my two little
children their mother is dying?'"
Dr. Rauch says, "I tell parents – because it's true –
that they are the experts on their children. My role is to be a co-pilot
navigating with them the unfamiliar waters of life threatening illness."
She takes time to learn about each child's likes and dislikes, personality
and temperament. "The pride and pleasure most parents feel in their
children is often a welcome departure from the sadness, anger and
anxiety accompanying an illness." She encourages parents to maintain
schedules and routines and works with families to enlist the support
of their friends and community. She suggests creative and non-threatening
ways for families to talk about illness with their children and helps
parents prepare a child for a hospital visit. Even after a parent's
death, Dr. Rauch finds ways to ease a child's pain – encouraging
loved ones to share stories and memories.
Dr. Rauch began her career at MGH in 1982 as a psychiatry resident.
She began her child psychiatry consultation work with pediatric patients
in 1986, and in 1987 became the psychiatrist in the Cystic Fibrosis
Clinic. One year later, she became the associate chief of the Child
Psychiatry Consultation Service at the hospital, and in 1998, she
became chief. She is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard
Medical School; consultant at a local preschool; and advisor for "Arthur,"
a popular PBS children's cartoon. She has worked on initiatives to
address underage drinking, helped develop anti-tobacco curriculum
for middle school children, and recently served on the Assistant Surgeon
General's committee for child mental health resiliency in the aftermath
of September 11.
In this fast-paced health care world, the children of seriously ill
patients are often overlooked. Dr. Rauch takes the time to talk with
families, offer perspective, and remind people that in the face of
such sadness and terror, there is hope. A physician close to Dr. Rauch
said, "Ask yourself who in the health care industry is helping to
replace terror with hope. The hope that your kids will remember you;
the hope that they will take something positive away from the experience;
and most of all, the hope that your kids will love life and not feel
cheated. It's Paula Rauch who is providing hope and we are all better
for it."
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