2013
AUTUMN
Foundation Report 2013
Your donations help patients like Maggie A devastating car accident on her 17th birthday marked the start of a long and difficult journey for Maggie Shannan. The remarkable story of her recovery – and the important role played by our hospitals and by donors like you – follows. The first person to come upon the scene of Maggie’s mangled car at the side of the road was a volunteer firefighter who knew exactly what to do. He kept her stabilized until the ambulance arrived to take her to the hospital in Perth, and she was soon airlifted to Kingston General Hospital (KGH). Maggie received five blood transfusions in the helicopter, and when she arrived in Kingston, the trauma team got to work immediately. Maggie would spend the next month and a half in a medicallyinduced coma, breathing through a tracheotomy as her body began to
INSIDE Executive Director’s message
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Eye clinic expansion opened
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Philanthropy awards
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Inside diagnostic laboratories
6, 7
Supporting education
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Summer highlights
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Patient-centred research
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30th Annual Black Tie Evening
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Robin Sharma at new event
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Maggie Shannan’s amazing recovery has taken her through all three of Kingston’s hospitals.
heal itself. She’d broken her neck, her spine (in two places), fractured her pelvis and also sheered her sacrum. She had significant swelling on her brain and had punctured one of her lungs. The road to Maggie’s recovery has been long and excruciatingly painful, but it could not have turned out
better. “I went for a run last night. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do that,” she says. In June, the young lady who could easily have been confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, walked across the stage at her school to receive her high school diploma. Continued on page 4
What goes into a diagnosis? Have you ever wondered what happens to those little vials of blood or other specimens taken for testing in the hospital? On pages 6 & 7, we are taking you behind the restricted access signs on the laboratory doors at Kingston General Hospital, where more than 5 million tests are completed every year. About 80 per cent of all medical decisions at KGH are based on lab results. While the lab team works behind-the-scenes, they know every sample represents a patient, focusing on accuracy and timeliness of results.