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home Gifts at Work |
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The following grants are our most recent and were made possible through gifts made by donors. YOUR gift can be used to make similar grants. These three grants, totaling $156,540, have been made possible through gifts to the Major Hospital Foundation from people who want to make sure we have a good hospital here in Shelby County. If you would like to be a part of grants similar to the ones that follow, or if you just want to help support health care in our community, please contact us for more information, or simply make an on-line gift using your debit or credit card. Clicking on How to Give will explain different types of gifts. Project Fever Control 
The Major Hospital Emergency Room has approximately 24,000 visits per year. Of those 24,000, roughly 3,800 are pediatric cases, or those involving children. Frequently, the children are feverish. For about half of these children, when their parents are asked how high the child's temperature is running or for how long the child has had the fever, the parents don't know. Sounds odd, doesn't it? Taking a child's temperature is a simple procedure, and something we all think every parent has done many times. Yet, many parents presenting in the Major Hospital Emergency Room have not. Emergency Room staff hear the same simple yet astounding thing again and again; the family doesn't own a thermometer. When asked why not, a large percentage report that they can't afford to buy one.
Many people who can't afford medical care rely on the emergency room as their primary healthcare source since no one can be turned away due to an inability to pay. What many people don't realize, however, is that the emergency room is only a place to come for emergencies, not for non-emergent medical treatment. If it's a simple ten-day course of antibiotics a person needs, the emergency room is not the appropriate place to go. Unfortunately, this misunderstanding results in many people running up expensive emergency room bills that they do not have the ability to pay, and since they're trying to use the emergency room for primary healthcare instead of its true purpose-an emergency-they're not really getting the care that they need. Even more unfortunate is that the hospital, because of federal regulations, must spend more money trying to collect fees from people who simply cannot pay. In the case of a child with a mild fever, however, things will soon be slightly different in the Major Hospital Emergency Room thanks to the Emergency Room Employee Support Committee and the Major Hospital Foundation. The Committee has received a grant in the amount of $8,280.00 from the Major Hospital Foundation to purchase thermometers and ibuprofen/acetaminophen vouchers for the parents of children who present with a fever and report that they are unable to afford a thermometer or medications to treat fever. They will also receive a laminated dosing chart, and the nurse will spend extra time with the parents providing education. The nurse will show the parents how to use the thermometer, how to dose appropriately for the child's age and weight, and how to know in the future if a visit to the emergency department is necessary. Of course, any child that needs to be admitted to the Hospital from the emergency room will be. Parents will leave the emergency room knowing how to treat a fever and with the ability to procure medications to control fever. They'll know how to measure the severity of a fever and when a child, or anyone else with a fever, needs to go to the emergency room. Not only will they have some valuable knowledge, but they will be empowered to make more appropriate and more cost-effective healthcare decisions for their family. Not a bad day's work for the Emergency Room or the Major Hospital Foundation!  Reach Out and Read  Story books and childhood go hand in hand, and Major Hospital's Shelbyville Pediatrics has found a program to make sure that all of their patients have books to read while at the same time giving their physicians an additional tool to nurture their small patients and even encourage their eventual success in school.
This program is called "Reach Out and Read," and the Major Hospital Foundation has made a grant to Shelbyville Pediatrics in the amount of $3,000 to help continue the program. This $3,000 grant from the Hospital Foundation will be matched 3:1 by the Reading is Fundamental Organization for a total of $12,000. Here's how it works. The Shelbyville Pediatrics physicians are trained by Reach Out and Read in early language development and emergent literacy promotion as well as the application of both within the primary care visit. At each well-visit to the doctor's office, every child between six months and five years receives a new, developmentally appropriate children's book directly from their physician to take home. Not only does the child receive a book, but the parents receive counseling from the physician in the importance of reading aloud to their child and advice about age-appropriate books and frequent reading at home. All of this happens in an atmosphere that is already one of trust and one where parents expect to receive instruction in the care of their child. By integrating literacy into standard well-child visits, physicians promote the acquisition of spoken and receptive language skills in young children, thereby increasing the likelihood of eventual school success-a pretty good deal for a $3,000 grant! Advanced Surgery Techniques  The Surgery Department at Major Hospital will soon have two new pieces of equipment that will make certain surgeries less invasive and will keep some patients closer to home for their surgeries. This equipment will also allow the surgeons at Major Hospital to perform certain surgeries while using the most advanced techniques-techniques that are usually only found at larger hospitals.
The equipment is an intra operative ultrasound and radio frequency generator. An intra operative ultrasound is just what it sounds like-an ultrasound that can be used during surgery. The ultrasound's slender wand can be inserted into an incision that is approximately ¾ of inch long (in most cases), and the patient's internal organs can be examined with two advantages. First of all, the ultrasound wand is right next to the organ. It does not have to pick up waves through skin, fat and muscle tissue, so the resulting picture is much more clear than with traditional ultrasound techniques. Also, the patient's organs can be examined without an incision that is several inches long and actually open. The tiny incision and wand are much less invasive than a large incision and manual examination, and this lowers the risk for infection and other complications. The intra operative ultrasound will most commonly be used during liver tumor ablation, gallbladder removal, colon resection, and breast biopsies. The radio frequency generator is a device that is used to destroy liver tumors with ablation, or heat. It gives patients another option for treating liver tumors if chemotherapy is not working or if the patient is not a good candidate for surgery. Before this grant, patients had to travel to Cincinnati or Indianapolis for liver tumor ablation. They had to meet new doctors and stay in a strange place. With the radio frequency generator at Major, they can stay close to home with doctors that they already know. The Major Hospital Foundation chose to make this grant not only because it's safer and less invasive for the patient as well as keeping them close to home, but it is also a piece of equipment that is not usually found at a smaller hospital like Major. Having the equipment makes Major's surgery department several steps ahead of neighboring hospitals of similar size-supporting Major Hospital's mission to offer superior healthcare solutions. |
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