Our Focus: Caring for Children and their Families
Floating Hospital for Children is the full-service children’s hospital of Tufts Medical Center, located in downtown Boston and with partnerships in the community. Our 128-bed children’s hospital offers pediatric inpatient and outpatient services in every medical and surgical specialty – from general pediatric services to the care of the most complex cancers, heart diseases and traumas. We are the principal children’s hospital for Tufts University School of Medicine, where all our physicians hold faculty positions. Specialists from our children's hospital in Boston are among the most talented and highly trained professionals in the country. Our focus and mission every day is to improve the lives of children and their families. What truly makes us different is that we treat each child as if they are our own.
Floating Hospital’s services begin with the earliest stages of life in our Level III Newborn Intensive Care Unit and continue with the care of healthy and sick children from toddlers to adolescents ready for adulthood. In addition, affiliations with community hospitals and physicians around Eastern Massachusetts allow the Floating Hospital’s pediatric specialists and surgeons to make their expertise available in numerous satellite specialty programs that are closer to home for children in outlying areas.
Floating Hospital for Children has long been known for its many innovations in pediatric medicine and for providing care for the entire family. In fact, the very beginning of the Floating Hospital was internationally heralded as a giant step forward in the care of children. In the late 1800s, the hospital began its mission as a ship that sailed Boston Harbor offering care and fresh air to Boston’s children, and teaching mothers how to participate in their children’s health care.
Long since anchored in downtown Boston, Floating Hospital continues to improve the care of children, always remembering the importance of family in the healing process. Our hospital was the first to allow parents to stay overnight in the room with their hospitalized children. Our Kiwanis Pediatric Trauma Institute is the first U.S. trauma center exclusively for children. Child life specialists at Floating Hospital help children and families address their fears and worries through therapeutic play, onsite support groups and open visiting hours for parents and siblings.
Additional advancements in the care of children spearheaded at Floating Hospital range from the development of the infant formula Similac, used to nourish millions of infants worldwide, recent advances in bone marrow transplantation, the detection of genes that may affect a child’s health and innovative clinical management to dramatically improve the quality of life of children with genetically inherited metabolic diseases.
Whether it is through ground-breaking research or through the compassionate care given by our physicians and nurses, Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center is dedicated to curing disease and keeping families healthy. Most recently, Floating Hospital became one of 221 members and supporters of The National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions (NACHRI) -
A nonprofit association and collective voice for health systems devoted to the well-being of America's 70 million children and their families, no matter how sick or how poor.
Watch Pediatrician-in-Chief and Chief Administrative Officer, John Schreiber, MD discuss Floating Hospital for Children's history, our team and how we treat each child like our own on our tuftsmedicalcenter.tv website.
Floating Hospital for Children
755 Washington Street
Boston, MA 02111
Phone: 617-636-5000
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