IN BRIEF

Ministry providers support AHA anti-violence campaign

The American Hospital Association hosted its annual Hospitals Against Violence “Have Hope Friday” to highlight how hospitals and health systems nationwide are combatting violence.

Have Hope Friday, promoted under the hashtag #HAVhope, invited health care systems and facilities to share how they are using partnerships, innovation, advocacy and creative thinking and solutions to foster a safer environment for patients, staff and community members. Among ministry organizations supporting Hospitals Against Violence in June on Twitter were CommonSpirit Health, CHA, Trinity Health and Trinitas Regional Medical Center of Elizabeth, New Jersey.

A focus of the Friday postings was health care organizations’ support of the Safety from Violence for Healthcare Employees Act, legislation that has been proposed in Congress to provide legal protections against assault and intimidation to health care workers.

Our Lady of the Lake offers virtual cardiac rehabilitation

Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is now offering cardiac rehabilitation virtually.

The services are offered through a partnership between Our Lady of the Lake’s parent, Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, and the telehealth company Recora. The virtual care offers heart disease patients the option to recover at home as they would at the cardiac rehab facility at Our Lady of the Lake Heart & Vascular Institute.

Francisican Missionaries of Our Lady Health System announced its partnership with Recora in February. Our Lady of the Lake is the first hospital in the health system to launch the virtual cardiac rehabilitation program.

Recora’s services remove issues patients often face with transportation and scheduling while providing on-demand support from care teams, 24/7 chat and additional resources.

Black female doctors

From page 1 experiences.

“It was a huge eye-opener for me,” she says. “A lot of data that I knew in the back of my head but I never really conceptualized was true.”

Book inspiration

She points out that Black women are 40% more likely than white women to die from breast cancer and are more likely to have advanced breast cancer. Many do not have access to mammography.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she saw Black patients’ mistrust of the vaccine, a fear rooted in a long history of the medical field mistreating and exploiting Black people.

When she talked to Black children about what they wanted to be when they grew up, they’d say Beyoncé or Jay-Z. “Nobody ever said health care, right?” she says.

She knew she could serve as an example. One white patient brought her two Black adopted children to meet Oruwari. “She wanted them to see someone of color who was practicing medicine just so that they

Mercy Cedar Rapids joins local Catholic partners for service project

Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, completed its sixth annual service project with two other local Catholic organizations last month. The organizations call the one-day community service project Circle the City.

The tradition is a way for the sister ministries to mark the anniversary of the July 1875 arrival of the Sisters of Mercy in Cedar Rapids. The other partners are Mount Mercy University and the Catherine McAuley Center, a nonprofit social services organization.

This year, volunteers from all three organizations worked together to assemble 15,000 meals for the Take Away Hunger organization. That organization distributed the meals to community members who are in crisis.

SSM Health moves skilled nursing care from Mt. Calvary to Fond du Lac

SSM Health is moving Villa Loretto — which is the skilled nursing care facility at its eldercare campus in Mt. Calvary, Wisconsin — to an SSM Health eldercare campus in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

SSM Health said in a statement that the demand for skilled nursing beds has been declining at Villa Loretto and the facility can see that this is a possibility,” the doctor says.

All of these things, Oruwari says, sparked the idea for this book.

Different paths to medicine

Oruwari knew some of the Black female doctors profiled in the book. Others she contacted through social media. They filled out a questionnaire, or, if they preferred, Oruwari interviewed them. Each profile reads like a short essay.

The doctors’ calls to medicine were different: Oruwari knew her career path since she was 3, when she sat in her grandfather’s hut in Nigeria and watched him give natural remedies to people as a traditional medicine man.

Dr. Jade James-Halpert, an obstetrician and gynecologist at SSM Health DePaul Hospital, writes that her mother used a lot of home remedies growing up, and she interpreted that to mean there was a shortage of Black doctors. “I decided I wanted to become one so I could help communities of color with their health,” she writes.

Many of the doctors are frank about struggles in medical school, or instructors not believing they should go into a certain field. Some have faced subtle or more overt is at less than half its 50-bed capacity. The facility also has an aging physical plant. SSM Health said in the statement that after a period of rigorous discernment, “we determined it would be best to consolidate our skilled nursing operations to our nearby St. Francis Home in Fond du Lac.” St. Francis Home is attached to St. Agnes

Hospital.

SSM Health is helping Villa Loretto residents relocate to St. Francis Home or another location of their choice. SSM Health has invited Villa Loretto employees to transition to jobs at other SSM Health facilities. The Villa Rosa assisted living facility and the Cristo Rey Ranch petting zoo that are also on the Mt. Calvary campus remain open.

Back-to-school supply drive brings first responders to hospital campus discrimination from their peers, supervisors and patients. Some have struggled with their own mental health.

First responders from nearby police and fire departments took part in HSHS St. John’s Children’s Hospital’s Touch a Truck Back-to-School Supply Drive at the hospital in Springfield, Illinois.

The hospital invited the community to its campus to get a close-up look at police cruisers, fire engines and ambulances from various agencies. The event attracted dozens of people who in turn donated back-to-school supplies for children at local schools.

Some of the first responders who came for the event visited children getting care at St. John’s.

The hospital’s partners on the July 27 event were the Springfield police and fire departments; the Chatham, Illinois, Fire Department; Southern Illinois University School of Medicine; and America Ambulance.

Women in general experience similar stresses, and they often think they are all alone, says Oruwari.

“We don’t really talk to each other because everybody’s trying to make it through,” she says. “And there’s this thing in medical training where you don’t show any sign of weakness. So you don’t complain, you don’t talk to each other, everybody’s doing just fantastic, right? So you don’t realize until you start talking to each other that you all probably had the same struggle.”

Beyond the white coats

Many of the women discuss their life outside of work, which includes time with family, mentoring and educating others through TikTok and other social media. Some of them have side businesses, such as providing financial consulting for women or marketing a line of fashion eyewear.

Many of the doctors write about the moment of recognition and joy when Black patients walk through an exam room door and are greeted by a doctor who looks like them. Studies show that this goes beyond simple recognition: Black doctors and patients listen to one another, resulting in better outcomes.

Writes Dr. Esther Ufot, who practices family medicine in Atlanta: “My proudest moment was a 90-year-old patient who had marched with Martin Luther King Jr. saying to me, ‘You are the first Black doctor I have ever seen in my 90 years, and I am glad I am alive to see this.’”

That recollection gave Oruwari chills.

Oruwari asked the doctors to submit two types of photos: a professional one, maybe wearing a white coat or scrubs, and another as simply women, maybe glammed up for a night out.

“I know what appeals to the kids is glamour,” she says. “They don’t want to talk about going to school for eight years.”

Modeling possibilities

When Oruwari was in medical school, she was mentored by two female surgeons — even more of a rarity in those days — who specialized in breast cancer surgery. “Walking into the hospital and meeting these women who were surgeons was so inspiring to me, because, oh my gosh, they’re women,” she recalls. “And, I mean, they’re doing this. I can certainly do this.”

Oruwari knows she will retire someday and wants someone who looks like her to fill her shoes. As a Catholic, she is grateful SSM Health is on board with her mission and is helping her promote the book. She’s given away copies to local schools and youth organizations.

“This book is not only for every little Black girl out there who has dreamt of wearing a white coat and a stethoscope,” she writes in the book’s introduction. “It is also for all the little Black girls that have not dreamt of it because they have never thought it a possibility.” vhahn@chausa.org