Hospital for Sick Children

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**Hospital for Sick Children**
Location

Atrium of the Hospital for Sick Children. Designed by Eberhard Zeidler.
Place	Toronto, Ontario, (Canada)
Organization
Care System	Public Medicare (Canada) (OHIP)
Hospital Type	Teaching, Specialist
Affiliated University	University of Toronto
Services
Emergency Dept.	Yes
Beds	265
History
Founded	1875
Links
Website	Homepage
See also	Hospitals in Canada

The Hospital for Sick Children, also known as SickKids, is a world-renowned children's hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is a teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto. It was founded in 1875, inspired by the example of Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, England. The hospital is located on University Avenue, a block south of Queen's Park, near Queen's Park and St. Patrick subways stations.

1 Funding
2 History
- 2.1 Infant deaths
3 Contributions to medicine
4 Recent events
5 References
- 5.1 Footnotes
6 External links

[edit] Funding

The Hospital for Sick Children from University Avenue.

Medical treatments at SickKids are covered by publicly funded health insurance, as is the case in all Canadian hospitals. The hospital foundation maintains a fund, called the Herbie Fund, for patients not covered by Canadian health insurance. The fund was established in 1979 to provide for the treatment of a seven month old patient from Brooklyn, New York named Herbie Quinones.

[edit] History

Victoria Hospital for Sick Children

During the spring of 1875 a group of Toronto women led by Elizabeth McMaster rented an 11-room house for $320 a year. They set up six iron cots and "declared open a hospital 'for the admission and treatment of all sick children.'" Their first patient, Maggie, was a scalding victim, and came in on April 3.

"In that first year, 44 patients were admitted to the Hospital. Sixty-seven others were treated in outpatient clinics." ^[1]

In 1876 the hospital moved to larger facilities. In 1891 the hospital moved from rented premises to a building constructed for it at College and Elizabeth streets where it would remain for sixty years. This old building, known as the Victoria Hospital for Sick Children is now the Toronto area headquarters of Canadian Blood Services. In 1951 the hospital moved to its present University Avenue location. The hospital underwent its last major expansion in 1993 with the construction of a glass-roofed atrium behind the main building.

[edit] Infant deaths

In 1981, tests indicated that as many as 43 babies in the cardiac ward were poisoned by deliberate administration of massive overdoses of the drug digoxin. This prompted an investigation by the Toronto police. Susan Nelles, a nurse scheduled on duty at the time of several of the deaths, was arrested and charged with first degree murder of four of the babies and she was on duty when 23 suspicious deaths occurred. During the same time frame Nelles was alleged to have murdered four babies, a total of 24 babies had died on the cardiac ward in suspiciously similar circumstances, but when she was not on duty. The digoxin deaths stopped after Nelles was arrested, but stricter policies on administrating drugs in the ward were also put in place. Charges against Nelles were thrown out at a preliminary hearing after it was revealed that she was not on duty when one of the four babies died. A Royal Commission, the Grange Inquiry, on the deaths concluded at least eight infants had been murdered and suspicion fell on another nurse. As of 2005, only Nelles was charged with a crime involving the baby deaths..^[2]

A book on the case, Death Shift: The Digoxin Murders at Sick Kids was written by Ted Bessland.

[edit] Contributions to medicine

The hospital was an early leader in the fields of food safety and nutrition. In 1908 a Pasteurization facility for milk was established at the hospital. Researchers at the hospital invented the infant cereal, Pablum. The research that led to the discovery of Insulin took place nearby at the University of Toronto and was soon applied at the hospital. Doctor Frederick Banting, one of the researchers, had served his internship at SickKids and went on to become an attending physician there. In 1991, Dr Arlette Lefebvre founded Ability Online, an online community for ill and disabled children and their families.

[edit] Recent events

Recently, SickKids helped save the life of 10-year-old Djamshid Popal from Afghanistan by treating his heart problem, after the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario diagnosed his illness and referred this patient.^[3]

[edit] References

Braithwaite, Max (1974). Sick Kids; the story of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. ISBN 0-7710-1636-0.

[edit] Footnotes

^ Sick Kids History. Hospital for Sick Children (2005-12-15). Retrieved on 2006-09-14.
^ Ontario. Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Certain Deaths at the Hospital for Sick Children and Related Matters . Toronto: Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General, 1984. (Commissioner: Samuel G. M. Grange). ISBN 0774399686 (pbk.)
^ Healthy Djamshid Popal heads home to Afghanistan. CTV (2004-11-27). Retrieved on 2006-09-14.

[edit] External links

University of Toronto teaching hospitals edit
	CAMH \| Hospital for Sick Children \| Mount Sinai Hospital \| St. Michael's Hospital \| Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre \| Women's College Hospital \| University Health Network (Toronto General Hospital, Toronto Western Hospital, Princess Margaret Hospital)