Ochotny Joins Akron Children’s Palliative Care Center

AKRON, Ohio – Rachel Ochotny, M.D., has joined Akron Children’s as an attending physician in the hospital’s Haslinger Family Pediatric Palliative Care Center.

Ochotny comes from Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, where she has worked with the pediatric palliative care and cardiology teams since 2022.

She completed a pediatric palliative care fellowship at Akron Children’s in 2022, and a fellowship in pediatric cardiology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Following medical school at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Buffalo, N.Y., she completed her internship and residency in pediatrics at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

Ochotny has special interest in prenatal/neonatal palliative care, caring for children in palliative care who have serious cardiac conditions, and using technology to optimize clinical care.

Akron Children’s Haslinger Family Pediatric Palliative Care Center is one of the oldest pediatric palliative care programs in the country. The center offers specialized medical care for children with serious illnesses, including genetic disorders, cancer, prematurity, neurologic disorders, and heart and lung conditions.

The focus is on relieving the child’s symptoms, the pain and stress of a serious illness, and improving quality of life for both the child and family.

In addition to physicians, the team includes advance practice providers, nurse case managers, social workers, a bereavement coordinator and chaplain, child life specialists, expressive therapists (art, music and narrative medicine), psychologists, dietitians, pharmacists, physical and occupational therapists and trained volunteers.

The team supports families facing complex and chronic illnesses, those in need of additional support and resources, and those who could benefit from expert pain and/or symptom management. In addition, they help families who find their child’s hospitalizations increasing and their condition declining.

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