Getting ready to ride for modern hospital equipment, remembering Emmalee Rose and a review of the Northern Transmission Line is underway, some of the items of interest from the Friday news cycle.
Daily News, front page headline story
PAYING IT FORWARD - LOCAL NURSE RAISING FUNDS FOR HOSPTIAL-- A preview of the journey ahead for a Prince Rupert Regional Hospital emergency nurse, who in May is about to set out on a long distance bicycle trek to raise funds to help purchase some high definition equipment, which would replace the current items some of which date back twenty years or more.
Details of the fee increases planned by the City as part of their budget deliberations of the last week, which will contribute towards helping keep the current planned tax increase of 3.5 per cent intact, as opposed to a possible increase of as much as 5.4 per cent.
Friday's paper features a lengthy profile of Emmalee Rose McLean, the Nisga'a teenager's body was discovered in the waters of Cow Bay last weekend, a discovery which the RCMP is still investigating as a suspicious death. George T. Baker profiles her short life and poses some tough questions for local residents as they try to come to grips with the tragedy.
The Sports section features a look at the high school golf season ahead with some background on both the PRSS and CHSS golf teams.
(Daily News Archives for April 16, 2010 )
Paying it forward - local nurse raising funds for hospital
Fee increases part of City’s budget
Remembering Emmalee...
School District assessing numbers of teacher required
The Northern View
Drowning ruled the preliminary cause of death in case involving 16-year old girl -- A few details are released from autopsy of Emmalee Rose Mclean, the 16 year old Nisga'a youth discovered in the waters of Cow Bay last week, the preliminary findings indicate that the cause of death was drowning (see article here)
CFTK TV 7 News
Transmission Line Review Begins -- The formal environmental assessment of the Northwest Transmission Line project is underway as the B-C Environmental Assessment Office will conduct a 180-day review of the project (see article here)
CBC News British Columbia, Daybreak North
Basketball UNBC -- Daybreak looks at the upcoming changes to the UNBC basketball program for the fall of 2010 (listen to interview here)
Daily News, front page, headline story
Paying it forward - local nurse raising funds for hospital
By Monica Lamb-Yorski
The Daily News
Friday, April 16, 2010
A Prince Rupert nurse has decided she wants to do something to give
to the community.
During the month of May, Nurse Rae, an emergency nurse at the Prince Rupert Regional Hospital, will be cycling from Red Deer, Alberta to Prince Rupert.
Three years ago she had a total knee replacement performed at the Prince Rupert hospital.
“I can nurse again. My life is so good, because this is what I feel I should be doing, so I’m paying it forward,” Nurse Rae explained.
She’s using the trek as a way to gather pledges to help her assist the hospital in purchasing some new high-definition equipment. And she admitted, she’s not a natural fundraiser. “This is so beyond my comfort zone.”
“Why should the doctors in this hospital be using equipment that’s twenty years old?,” Nurse Rae asked in an interview with the Daily News.
“[High-definition equipment is] the monitors that the surgeons use for doing Endoscopy surgeries - this is where instead of making large incisions they poke small holes and insert a camera and the equipment that they are going to use. They do things like gallbladder removals, cancer surgeries and bowel surgeries. These are also the things they use for looking at joints and the equipment they are using is quite old.”
It doesn’t mean the old equipment isn’t safe, she added, but it is more difficult to work with than something that is better, like high definition equipment.
A poster for her ride contains a quote from local general surgeon, Dr. Phillip Nel.
“Almost every home in Prince Rupert has HDTV. Why should our surgeons be using 20-year old monitors and equipment when providing their best care?”
“In order to buy this new product for the doctors, each one is ninety thousand dollars each - and we want three. The North Coast Health Improvement Society has been fundraising for this for some time. I’m just one more in a long line of fundraisers,” Nurse Rae explained.
Showing off the old monitors, she described them as “ancient”.
“It may pay for itself through the fact that less people will have to go down south for surgeries because the surgeons will have better visualization in their field.” Rae suggested.
After the surgery on her knee, she believed her career as a nurse was over, so she enrolled to take a massage therapy course at a college in Red Deer.
She’s now completed the course and had originally planned to ride her bike home after graduation.
Her plan was just a casual ride, she said, until one of the doctors suggested she should fundraise. With encouragement from the hospital’s administrator, Murray Webster, and the director of nursing, Jane Wilde, she decided she’d make her ride into a cause.
“Every single penny I raise will go toward the equipment, none of it will go to the ride or the advertising. Every cent will go directly where it should go.”
Nurse Rae will leave Prince Rupert on April 28 to fly to Red Deer and will begin the ride home from Red Deer on May 3.
Her anticipated arrival home is May 28.
“I hope to have a really big party here at the hospital,” she commented.
In anticipation of her journey, Robin Knox, one of the lab technicians at the hospital, created a wall poster that will help the staff plot Nurse Rae’s journey.
“Each time someone donates they can write their name on a card. You will be riding with me, believe it or not. You can see I go through Rocky Mountain House and Saskatchewan River Crossing. Then I go up a little hill called the Sunwapta Pass and Jasper and then I have a little bit of a long ride in between McBride and Prince George - about 238 kilometres.”
She will be stopping at hospitals along the way to say “hi” to those who ship patients to the local hospital. “And then I’ll be coming home to Prince Rupert.”
Donations for the cause will be accepted at the hospital’s main desk and at Northern Savings Credit Union.
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