Community members who donate to the Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC) Foundation are not only supporting world-class healthcare close to home, but are inspiring healthcare professionals to find innovative solutions to the most pressing healthcare needs facing the region.
PRHC has shown commitment to fostering such innovation by being among the first hospitals in Canada, and the first of its size, to develop a dedicated multi-year nursing strategy that sets a visionary path for the nursing profession at the hospital.
Some recent nursing innovations that have been championed at PRHC were recognized through the donor-funded PRHC Foundation Nursing Innovation Awards, held at PRHC’s inaugural Nursing Symposium during National Nursing Week in May 2025.
“Innovation is one of the focus areas of PRHC’s strategic plan and an ambitious goal that the PRHC Foundation is proud to support,” says PRHC Foundation President and CEO Lesley Heighway.
“It’s wonderful to have an opportunity through the Nursing Symposium and the PRHC Foundation Nursing Innovation Awards to recognize, celebrate, and encourage all the innovations our hospital colleagues are pursuing.”
Through the PRHC Foundation awards, the hospital recognizes five nursing groups or individuals for their exceptional creativity, leadership, and the impact they have made to significantly improve patient-centred care, nursing practice, or healthcare systems.
“The focus has really shifted to promote nurses to make these changes and to be leaders and have professional development and growth in their career,” says award winner Rachel Whiteside, RN and PRHC interim clinical nurse educator for the hospital’s Women’s & Children’s program.
“I started my career wanting to be a nurse and wanting to help people and, to me, that meant going to work, doing my job, and providing the care — but now it’s so much more than that,” Whiteside says. “To have the support from the hospital and to see they’re prioritizing that really does make a difference, and it does make me want to keep going.”
Whiteside’s award-winning innovation involved collaboration with Peterborough City and County paramedics to add warming mattresses to every ambulance for neonates — babies that are 28 days old or younger. The idea came to her when she noticed a pattern and learned that 10 out of 13 neonates who arrived at PRHC within the past year were hypothermic upon arrival.
Among the many detrimental effects of hypothermia in babies are respiratory distress, hypoglycemia, and increasing risk of sepsis — all of which require separating newborns from their mothers for treatment, at a time when that connection is crucial.
“We try our best not to separate mom and baby, but when the baby needs to be in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, there is that disconnect,” Whiteside explains. “Mom and baby can’t be rooming together, and babies can’t have a constant connection if they’re hooked up to monitors or if they’re on CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) or any other kind of intervention.”
“It causes a lot of stress on the baby to not be with their family that way, so I wanted to figure out why this was happening,” she adds.
In the emergency department, PRHC uses warming mattresses for patients with cracked discs to provide “instant warmth.” Whiteside suggested that, as is done in some remote communities, local emergency medical services could also have warming mattresses in their vehicles so they can keep the neonates warm during transportation.
At very little cost, Whiteside’s innovation means fewer neonates will come to the hospital in hypothermic states, ensuring they are at less risk and can connect with their families sooner.
“If they are properly thermally regulated, the chances of us stabilizing them are higher,” Whiteside says. “Hopefully if they come in nice and warm, they’re not going to have all these trickle-down effects like hypoglycemia. If it just helps one family in our community and one baby, that’s a big deal for me.”
Carly Ryan is another inaugural PRHC Foundation Nursing Innovation Awards recipient for her efforts in conducting an evidence-based review that introduced a topical lidocaine rubbing cream for procedural pain control in pediatric patients.
The new cream is more cost-effective, acts more quickly, and results in a better experience for pediatric patients when compared to the product previously used.
“We know as nurses that pediatric populations can be a bit tricky to reassure because they don’t always understand what we’re doing when it comes to painful procedures,” says Ryan. “We have to be a bit creative with that so the patient can have a good therapeutic relationship with us.”
The previous numbing cream required up to 60 minutes to take full effect. In comparison, the new cream takes only 20 minutes to activate and is just as effective, which improves the patient experience.
By reducing wait times, children spend less time feeling anxious, which helps build trust in healthcare professionals from an early age.
“The new cream offers a near-painless experience which can completely change how a child feels about their healthcare provider,” says Ryan. “The more positive of an experience we can give them, the more likely they’ll grow and adapt, and the anxiety will be less and less as they become adults.”
“The new cream also helps us move children through the clinic more quickly, which reduces the risk of infection between patients,” Ryan adds.
Not only were the Nursing Innovation Awards funded by donors, but a hospital environment where equipment and technology is donor-funded reinforces the ability of nurses, doctors and staff to innovate.
“With donor support, the PRHC Foundation funds advanced equipment and technology that our hospital colleagues use to provide exceptional patient care,” says Heighway. “Often, it’s that great care that inspires a donor to give. They or a loved one were treated at PRHC, received expert compassionate care from nurses, doctors, or staff, and they want to do something to give back. So, they donate to say thank you and help PRHC’s healthcare providers help the next patient.”
“When we use those donations to update equipment, we never replace like with like. That new, donor-funded technology is always better than what was in place before. It’s faster, safer, more accurate, and it helps bring new services and more great medical professionals to our region. That’s an environment that fuels innovative solutions to hospital challenges and supports world-class patient care.”
For Ryan, support from donors in the community along with initiatives like the Nursing Symposium inspire nurses to continue finding new and creative solutions that benefit their patients.
“Having that community support encourages us to engage in these dialogues to see where we can maybe make changes, and it allows us to grow, adapt, and feel like we’re part of a team that is ever-expanding and ever-evolving with a patient-care centred approach,” she says.
“With continued support from the hospital and Foundation year after year, the possibilities keep growing. I’m really excited to see how this progresses and what it will mean for the future of patient care at PRHC.”
For her part, Heighway says Whiteside and Ryan and their fellow PRHC Foundation Nursing Innovation Awards winners have all demonstrated exceptional creativity, leadership, and impact.
“Through innovative practices, projects, and research, they’re significantly improving patient-centred care and nursing practice,” she says. “Ultimately, that means patients — our family, friends and neighbours — are receiving better care.”
“Rachel and Carly’s innovations are making a difference for some of PRHC’s youngest, most vulnerable patients, which is particularly inspiring — for donors, and for Rachel and Carly’s colleagues who may be considering the ways they can address challenges they see in their own areas of care and are looking to them as an example.”
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