The Winter Foundation Report

the

FOUNDATION

report

Winter 2018

Jack and Lori Shore and their dog, Shasta Daisy. Jack and Lori relocated to Kingston in 2015 from the Newcastle area. They have come to appreciate what it means to have great care, close to home.

In This Issue:

Coming Home to Life-Saving Care

Message from Our President

The doctor’s words still ring in my ears. “We’ve adjusted our parameters for treating people your age,” he said. With a pulse of 39 and a blood pressure of 202 over 97, he sent me home.

Page 2

HOW TO FIGHT A SUPERBUG AND WIN! Page 2

FINDING HOPE AND JOY IN LONG-TERM CARE Page 3

SPOTLIGHT ON EMERGENCY MEDICINE Page 4

My wife Lori and I were in Florida. I’ve been healthy all my life and my instincts told me something wasn’t right. I called my insurance company and they said, “Mr. Shore, our advice to you is to come home.” We headed back to Kingston the next day.

A few days after we got home, on Saturday, March 10, I felt really strange and asked my wife to get me to the hospital.

Continued on page 5.

Message from our President Throughout my healthcare fundraising career, I’ve talked to thousands of donors and patients about care environments and how they support health outcomes. So I’m excited that this issue highlights how plans for new care spaces will improve the experience of patients at our KGH site.

When Jack Shore (see story page 1) had time in the KHSC Emergency Department, it didn’t take him long to realize that absorbing “the suffering going on around [him]” was unavoidable due to the lack of privacy in the busy space.

, Denise Cumming, UHKF President and CEO

Damiano Loricchio (see story page 4) tells the care team side of this story.

With 39 stretcher bays and as many as 70 patients in active emergency care, hallways are inevitably turned into care spaces.

Do we want better care environments that allow our staff to deliver the best care experience? The answer is a resounding “yes,” but sometimes they point to a work-in-progress.

Works-in-progress can be discouraging. Building KHSC’s new patient tower and Providence Care’s new long-term care home will take time.

But I never lose hope. I’ve seen countless examples of how the spirit of generosity moves through this community. Whatever must be built will be built because of donors like you who believe in the inherent worth of those who need care, the excellence of those who provide it, and the positive difference nurturing, person-centred environments can make.

How to Fight a Superbug and Win! Rene St. James spent his career working on the railroad as a Conductor but within a year of retirement, his life took a turn on a different kind of track. At 66 years of age, he began an exhausting journey with cancer. From prostate to throat to bladder to lungs, Rene’s multiple cancer surgeries and radiation treatments have kept him on a 15-year, stop-and-go struggle from diagnosis to recovery and back.

“My wife tells everybody that I’m very strong,” says Rene.

That strength was put to the test in the summer of 2017.

A life-threatening infection landed him in the Intensive Care Unit at Kingston Health Science’s Centre’s (KHSC).

Rene’s diary from his 13-day battle tells the behind-thescenes story of KHSC’s clinical laboratories working around the clock. Day by day, and

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sometimes hour by hour, the labs gave Rene’s medical team the timely results they needed to get him home and back on track.

After so many health struggles, another man might want to stay away from hospitals. But today, Rene makes the threehour round trip from Wellington to Kingston to participate in a lung cancer clinical trial.

“Clinical trials only improve health outcomes,” he says, “if people take part.”

A spirit of gratitude accompanied Rene throughout his ordeal. He talks of the “fantastic teamwork” that saved his life. Rene fought a superbug and won due, in part, to exceptional diagnostics right here in our community, thanks to donors like you. With your continued support, we can help more people like Rene!

Approximately 80 per cent of all laboratory testing for southeastern Ontario is carried out by KHSC labs. Building a new laboratory space to meet the rising demand is a major redevelopment priority.

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Jim and Helen Heyd at their daughter’s wedding in 1987.

Finding Hope and Joy in Long-Term Care Like so many people Helen Heyd knew there was something wrong with her husband but she wasn’t sure what. “Jim and I owned a bakery in Windsor,” she says, “and he went on deliveries one day and when I asked him why he was out longer than normal he said, ‘I made a wrong turn’.”

In 2004, with Jim’s dementia progressing, he and Helen moved to Kingston to be closer to family. In time, they were referred to Providence Care’s Hildegarde Day Program at Providence Manor, where Jim went for five years until he needed around-the-clock nursing care.

Jim and Helen celebrated 54 years of marriage this year. Providence Manor has been his full-time home for six of them. “I still second-guess myself,” says Helen, “and feel guilty for not having tried harder.” Having a spouse in long-term care is hard. “The support of the staff in the home means so much to me. They are like family.”

Continued on page 6.

SAMUEL S. ROBINSON FOUNDATION The UHKF and Providence Care are grateful for the extraordinary gift of $150,000 from the Dr. Samuel S. Robinson Charitable Foundation toward building a new long-term care home.

This brings their total donations to KHSC and Providence Care to more than $1.3 million.

Spotlight on Redevelopment: Q&A With Damiano Loricchio What’s your biggest challenge right now?

Space. Right now we have 37 stretcher bays and we sometimes have occupancy in the seventies. In the past five years we’ve focused on streamlining processes and we’ve been among the most improved in the province for wait times. But if we don’t have more care spaces we will not be able to optimize care for our patients.

Is it true that mental health visits are on the rise?

Yes. In the past six years our volumes have increased by 25

percent and our mental health visits have increased by about 50 percent. At the same time our three mental health rooms have been reduced to two.

How will the new Emergency Department be patient-centred?

When you have curtains and stretchers in hallways the patient experience is impacted. The new Emergency Department will give patients an environment with greatly improved privacy.

We will all benefit from a modern facility designed to help us provide excellent health care to our patients.

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The new Emergency Department will be years in the making, how do you stay positive?

This is a big opportunity, perhaps once in a lifetime. The more planning we put in, the better the outcome will be.

We have the chance to build an exceptional Emergency Department that will service millions of people and that’s exciting for everyone.

Damiano Loricchio is a Queen’s University Engineering graduate who joined KHSC in 2011. He currently serves as Operations Manager of the Emergency Department and has particular expertise in Emergency Department systems and patient flow.

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Coming Home to Life-Saving Care When we lived in Newcastle, we had to go all over for health care—Bowmanville, Oshawa, Toronto. Since our move to Kingston, I’m five minutes away.

That night, every minute mattered.

dropped. Back to the Emergency Department I went. When the doctor came to talk to me, I had started to feel better and I apologized, feeling guilty for having come in.

I arrived at the Emergency Department around 10:00 p.m. The young triage nurse took all the data I was able to give her and said, “I’ll be right back.” The next thing I knew they were zipping me in to the emergency room. “Whatever it is,” I thought to myself, “they’ll figure it out and I’ll get it taken care of.”

The young physician said, “Mr. Shore, when you come to the Emergency Department your job is to tell us about your symptoms. My job is to figure out what’s wrong with you.

Between the two of us we’ll sort this out.” We never did determine the source of the problem that night but the doctor kept me there until it was under control.

They put me in a trauma bay and hooked me up to all the machines and the doctor came in and said, “Mr. Shore, you need a pacemaker and you need it now.” They stabilized me that night and by Monday afternoon I was in the operating theatre.

At home, about two weeks later, my blood pressure jumped and my pulse

My wife and I spent 13 years as bereavement counselors after we each lost our first spouses to cancer. We know something about pain and sorrow. I thank the Lord for all the many blessings and I count among them such high quality care, close to home.

The hasty diagnosis in Florida lingers but it doesn’t overshadow my feelings of gratitude. When I was on the operating table last March, under local anaesthetic, and the doctors were finishing their work, I said, “I just want to take a minute and thank you all. I know you are highly skilled and highly trained but I sure appreciate what you are doing for me. So many people in the world don’t have this kind of care available to them.”

But as I lay there during that second visit I had time to look, listen and reflect. The care in the Emergency Department is excellent but the facility is worn. My first visit I was in a trauma bay with walls but the second time I was in a stretcher bay with curtains. With so little privacy, you cannot help but absorb the suffering going on around you.

5 | WINTER 2018

“

The care in the Emergency Department is excellent but the facility is worn.

- Jack Shore

the

FOUNDATION

report WINTER 2018

support of “ The the staff in the

home means so much to me.

They are like family.

Finding Hope and Joy in Long-Term Care

”

- Helen Heyd, wife of Providence Manor resident, Jim

Continued from page 3.

“When I look at the building I know it is old but it is Jim’s home.” If he does move to the new home at the Heathfield site, Helen is hopeful about the quality it will bring to his daily life, “Better access for larger wheelchairs, gardens and outdoor spaces that are easily accessible from all floors. A place to get some fresh air in the winter would be a Godsend.”

“Jim and I are still very young,” says Helen, “We’re only in our seventies. I imagined us doing all kinds of fine things together. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit some days are the pits.”

What does bring her joy, though, are those moments when she can make Jim laugh. “When I can tell him a story and bring a smile to my husband’s face, that’s a good day.”

GROWING WOMEN’S HEALTH In addition to the 2018 Growing Women’s Health Campaign kick-off, UHKF recently celebrated an additional gift of $25,704 from Shoppers Drug Mart to purchase minimally-invasive surgical equipment used by KHSC’s department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

uhkf.ca 55 Rideau Street, Suite 4 Kingston ON, K7K 2Z8 613.549.5452 uhkf.ca