Frontline healthcare professionals at Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC) will be ready for whatever comes this winter — but they need your continued support during this difficult year.
“Even in a pandemic, people are still having heart attacks, strokes and accidents, or coping with serious illnesses,” says Leah McCracken, a registered nurse in PRHC’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU). “Cancer patients still need specialized care. Babies are born needing help to breathe.”
By making a donation to the PRHC Foundation this holiday season, you can help the hospital invest in the lifesaving tools and technology that healthcare professionals like McCracken need to provide world-class care to patients from across our region.
When making your holiday gift, you can also share a message of thanks or best wishes with PRHC’s frontline workers, letting them know you’re thinking of them and helping them stay strong.
Your messages of support provide comfort and encouragement to frontline workers like McCracken and her colleagues in the ICU, who care for some of the hospital’s sickest patients — including people battling COVID-19 and people like Rosalie, who received the lifesaving care she needed at PRHC this fall after suffering a heart attack.
“It all started one Sunday morning when she started having terrible chest pains while visiting her new cottage in Marmora,” McCracken recalls. “Rosalie was rushed to PRHC where she was admitted to the ICU after a cardiac angiogram.”
“Rosalie tells me most of that Sunday is a blur. But when her husband tells the story, he says that he wasn’t worried — that our staff knew what we were doing, and we were on it the whole time.”
As a registered nurse in PRHC’s ICU for the past 18 years, McCracken has heard many stories like Rosalie’s. But this year “it really hit home for me,” she says.
“Now, more than ever, I realize how important it is for our hospital to invest in the best and latest equipment and technology to care for our sickest patients, at one of the most uncertain and frightening times in their lives.”
McCracken and her colleagues depend on that equipment and technology to do their jobs to the best of their ability. Many people are surprised to learn the government doesn’t fund hospital equipment or technology, which is why the most generous communities have the best hospitals.
“I know I speak for my colleagues across the hospital when I tell you how much we appreciate the generosity of our community,” McCracken says, referring to donations that have helped fund portable ultrasound machines for the ICU as well as new critical care beds that are essential to the comfort and safety of many ICU patients.
“But while we prepare for whatever comes this winter, we also need your help to ensure we can continue to take care of every single person who turns to us for lifesaving care and treatment,” she adds. That includes patients like Rosalie, who received the lifesaving care she needed during the pandemic, and others who are in urgent need of care in areas across the hospital.
Your gifts to PRHC Foundation this holiday season will help fund equipment for the hospital such as new Computerized Tomography (CT) scanners with advanced imaging capability to enable faster and more precise diagnoses and treatment, and reinvestment in facilities like the regional Cardiac Catheterization Lab so PRHC can keep stopping heart attacks in their tracks.
“The fact is, having access to tools like these leads to better care for your family, friends and neighbours,” McCracken says. “Your support also helps our hospital invest in the future, by attracting expert healthcare professionals to come to Peterborough to work at PRHC.”
McCracken is encouraging people to make the most generous gift they can to the hospital this holiday season.
“You can be sure we’ll continue to work hard to deliver the highest quality of patient care, whatever comes,” she says. “It’s your support today that will help us carry on.”
To make a gift to PRHC Foundation this holiday season, call 705-876-5000 or visit prhcfoundation.ca.
You can also send a message of thanks or best wishes to PRHC’s dedicated frontline healthcare professionals when making your donation. The PRHC Foundation will send your message on to the frontline workers you specify and share your message with the hospital community to lift their spirits and to inspire others.
This story was created in partnership with the Peterborough Regional Health Care Foundation.
