St. Luke’s Auxiliary Donates $149,000 to Improve Patient Care

Bethlehem, PA (6/9/2016) – The Auxiliary of St. Luke’s University Hospital has granted 27 funding requests from hospital departments as part of its annual Wish List program. Totaling $149,000, all of the gifts benefit patients in some way.

“We always look forward to reading the requests from the staff who work directly with patients,” says Auxiliary President Ann Marie Brogle. “They are attuned to the needs of their patients and families and know just what is needed to improve care and make the patient experience a little more pleasant. Sometimes the requests are small and often quite creative.”

Each departmental gift is less than $10,000 and ranges from $214 for a sound system in the radiology department of St. Luke’s Anderson Campus to $9,999 for a chest compression system for the Emergency and Transport System at St. Luke’s University Hospital – Bethlehem. Designed to help improve outcomes of sudden cardiac arrest victims, the device performs at least 100 compressions per minute, enabling first responders to care for the patient in other ways.

Throughout the year, the Auxiliary raises funds for the Wish List Program through a variety of activities. These include proceeds from the hospital gift shops, special sales, commission on vending machine revenue and the Classic on the Green Golf Tournament. In December, the Auxiliary invited departments to submit requests and received more than 60 proposals.

One of the requests granted this year is the purchase of an early ambulation device that holds items that a patient needs when getting out of bed, such as IVs, monitors and oxygen. This frees the hands of the staff member so he or she can help the patient stand and walk.

“Hopefully, we put smiles on some faces when we announced the awards,” Brogle says. “The feedback we get from the people we fund is amazing.” For example, she received a particularly moving note from an Iraqi War veteran, who said the scholarship affirmed his decision to become a nurse. In addition to department requests, the Wish List Program allocated $10,000 for scholarships to each the St. Luke’s School of Nursing and the Temple/St. Luke’s School of Medicine for scholarships. The School of Nursing received an additional $10,000 grant.

The area receiving the largest share of Wish List funds this year, $32,000, is St. Luke’s Women’s and Children’s Services. The funding will purchase a blanket warmer, labor room lights, infant scales, a pulse oximeter, digital cameras and bilirubin phototherapy units to treat babies with newborn jaundice.

Other wishes granted include the purchase of a bariatric bed for St. Luke’s Hospice House, and funding for the St. Luke’s Sports Medicine Youth Sport Safety Initiative, Cancer Survivors Day, and Run with the Heroes, an annual 5K run/walk that recognizes the trauma survivors and their loved ones and friends.

About St. Luke’s

St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a non-profit, regional, fully integrated, nationally recognized network providing services at six hospitals and more than 200 sites, primarily in Lehigh, Northampton, Carbon, Schuylkill, Bucks, Montgomery, Berks and Monroe counties in Pennsylvania and in Warren County, New Jersey.

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Media Contact:

Mariella B. Miller
Senior Director, Corporate Communications
St. Luke's University Health Network
484-526-4134
Mariella.Miller@sluhn.org

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