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Your support is enhancing patient care |
| The Enhanced Patient Care Committee at St. Paul’s improves patient care and patients’ overall experience at the hospital by improving access to items like specialized stretchers, patient lifts and televisions. Unfortunately, these are some of the items that usually fall outside
the normal hospital funding channels. Recognizing this, St. Paul’s
Hospital Foundation grants funds annually to help St. Paul’s
staff and physicians enhance their patients’ stay at or visit
to the hospital. Purchases range from televisions to hearing amplifiers Recent initiatives made possible by the Enhanced Patient Care Fund include a television for the Surgical Daycare Waiting Room; hearing amplifiers to help staff communicate with patients who are hard-of-hearing; and recliner chairs for the comfort of patients on the cardiac ward who are immobile and facing a long recovery period in hospital. “Thanks to this unique source of funding, any staff member or physician is able to identify an item or initiative that will make a difference to the patients in their care and apply for a grant,” says eye specialist Dr. Paul Dubord who chairs the Enhanced Patient Care Committee that makes the granting decisions. Challenges of providing good care on limited budget Dr. Dubord’s decision-making committee has a good understanding of the challenges of providing good patient care within a limited budget – the members work at St. Paul’s and represent a number of different disciplines, including nursing, family practice, pharmacy and planning. “I want to thank Lifeline readers for supporting the Foundation.
It’s very gratifying when we are able to provide grants that
not only make a difference for patients, but also help our colleagues
provide the best care possible,” Dr. Dubord concludes. Thanks a million A family touched by St. Paul’s Hospital several years ago recently made the most substantial individual donation in the hospital’s history. The $1 million donation in support of kidney transplant will allow the laboratory to purchase a new digital electron microscope, which is used extensively for kidney biopsies. As this important piece of equipment costs more than $600,000, the hospital had no other means to purchase it and replace the existing 25-year-old microscope. The donors’ generosity will also enable the hospital to equip an Endourology Suite and welcome a new urologist who will bring skills in performing less-invasive surgery for removing kidneys from living donors. Last year more than half the kidney donations at St. Paul’s came from living donors who underwent major surgery to give this important gift. VAD update The cover of our September 2001 issue of Lifeline featured heart surgeon Dr. Anson Cheung holding part of a Ventricular Assist Device or VAD, a device used to temporarily take over the heart’s pumping action for people with end-stage heart failure. As planned, the hospital took delivery of the VAD equipment late last year and the first patient received a VAD earlier this year. This lifesaving equipment was made possible by a donation from an anonymous supporter in the United States and the BC Hydro Employees Community Services Fund (The Hydrecs Fund). Celebrate your success The spring issue of Lifeline reported on the need for new echocardiography imaging machines for the Heart Centre and equipment for urology. The Foundation is pleased to report that thanks to generous donor support, $490,000 has been raised to purchase a $250,000 kidney stone laser and other surgical equipment needed for a newly recruited urologist, including a pneumatic lithotripter (stone destroyer) and flexible cystoscopes. We will welcome this specialist back to Canada from practice in the United States. As a result of your generosity, the hospital will shortly have two new echocardiography imaging machines worth $250,000 each. Due to the demand for this ultrasound imaging of the heart, the hospital requires a third new machine, and the Foundation still needs $200,000 to purchase it. Echocardiography is used for patients from across the province. St. Paul’s specialists use it during open-heart surgery and for procedures in the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory, as well as for helping to diagnose heart problems in outpatients or inpatients in the Heart Centre. |
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