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Le Bonheur’s Comprehensive Epilepsy Program saw an opportunity. Children in the community with a new onset seizure diagnosis were waiting to be seen by Le Bonheur physicians, but established epileptologists at Le Bonheur had waitlists and were filled with complex epilepsy patients.

Because of this, emergency departments (EDs) and primary care physicians were managing medications for some of these patients, and many children made frequent, expensive ED visits for treatment of their epilepsy.

As a result, Director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program and Co-Director of the Neuroscience Institute Jim Wheless, MD, partnered with Nurse Practitioner Brianna Dale, DNP, CPNP-PC, to create a new clinic that would specifically handle these new diagnoses in order to be more efficient and reduce health care costs. Now, Le Bonheur’s ED and community pediatricians can refer new or suspected seizure diagnoses for a fast evaluation in a dedicated clinic.

“Our hope with this clinic is to get evaluation and treatment earlier for these children,” said Dale. “Now we can get them plugged in quickly.”

A typical visit to the New Onset Seizure Clinic allows Dale to make an accurate diagnosis and counsel families. With an EEG as well as a thorough exam, Dale can confirm an epilepsy diagnosis and determine if patients need additional testing such as an Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (EMU) stay, a longer EEG or genetic testing.

She talks through the epilepsy diagnosis with families, including treatment options available and if they need to be referred to an epileptologist for more complex levels of care.

“While epilepsy is part of our everyday life, for parents, a child having one seizure is life-changing,” said Dale. “I try to take the time that families need and show what a child’s life looks like now with this diagnosis.”

Dale’s extended background in Le Bonheur’s Neuroscience Institute lends her to being the first point of contact for children experiencing seizures for the first time. Joining the Neuroscience Institute in 2018, Dale spent the past three years solely in the EMU, which she says, “set me up for seeing everything – a wide variety of patients and a wide variety of treatment styles from working with every epileptologist Le Bonheur has.”

Thanks to this dedicated clinic, this patient population is also able to have consistent, timely follow up with Dale in order to make sure their seizures stay under control. If their seizures become more complex over time, she can send them to the epileptologist, she says.

“The community we serve is very special, and we recognized that this was an unmet need,” said Dale. “This clinic gets to be a tiny piece of meeting some extra needs for these children.”