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| 840 Teaneck Road, Teaneck, NJ 07666 Tel.: (201) 837-4171 Fax: (201) 837-0410 |
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PROGRESS IN HEALING THE SICK
But to its pioneers it is extremely gratifying to stop and look back to the day when in spite of numerous obstacles, they set forth upon a special labor of faith and love. The general belief at the time was that Bergen County did not need another hospital, but the challenge was not of a material nature; it was to something nobler and higher, reaching out to the soul as well as to the body of the suffering neighbor. And so, at the earnest request of Doctors Frank C. McCormack and George P. Pitkin, our Sisters assumed the responsibility of building and organizing what became a joyful reality on October 4, 1925. On that day Holy Name Hospital, thoroughly equipped and scientifically complete, was opened to the public. Its achievements and rapid development surpassed all expectation. From its very beginning, the ladies from the adjoining communities, through the influence of the above-mentioned doctors, pledged their allegiance and formed auxiliaries that have worked hand in hand with the Sisters. Their unflagging interest and loyalty have earned for them the admiration of those in the hospital field, even outside of New Jersey State. The increase of nurse applicants rose so constantly and rapidly that in a few years a nurses' residence became a necessity. The building of the new, far-famed George Washington Bridge had its effect upon the hospital also, when Teaneck became one of the fastest growing towns in the United States. This influx of population brought so many additional patients to Holy Name, that a new seventy-bed wing had to be built and put into operation in 1931. And now, ten years later, crowded conditions demand still further physical expansion. Besides, the modern and hospital-minded public is today looking for hospitalization at the hands of trained, educated and skilled personnel. Advances in medicine and science proceeding from higher educational levels make inevitable the need of special preparation for every phase of hospital service. While the Sisters must keep in step with the trends and standards of the age, they can never permit themselves to stray from the sight of the good Samaritan. Whether the Sisters' hospital is to be a "business or not a business"--as questioned at the annual hospital conventions--will depend upon the motives and spirit of its staff. If they are guided by the primary objective with which they entered upon the work, namely, to serve God's poor, whether sick in mind or in body; to serve them with Him Who spent Himself in a gentle, tireless ministration to all mankind and to serve for that Divine Physician, Who alone can give success to all "business," they will prove that their hospital is something beyond the realm of any business. SISTER M. EVANGELISTA, Superior. ORTHOPEDIC SURGERY ORTHOPEDIC Surgery is the youngest of the surgical specialties; but at Holy Name Hospital it is a thriving infant indeed. As the staff was originally organized, there was no such department, and no provision for an orthopedic clinic. It was considered that the hospital was so "deep in the woods," so far off the beaten track, that the crippled and the lame would certainly not seek treatment here. How inaccurate was that prediction can be seen in the throngs, both of children and of adults, who now crowd the orthopedic clinic. Among causes of this continued growth are the use of the latest methods of treatment, where these have passed the experimental stage, and the installation of the most advanced equipment both in the oper- ating rooms and in the physical therapy department. An example of this is seen in the fact that, in less than fifteen years, no less than three fracture-orthopedic operating tables have been purchased, the one now in use representing the last word in such equipment. Perhaps the most outstanding feature of the department is the extensive use of bone-grafting technique in place of metal plates and screws of steel and alloys which have heretofore been so widely used. An original operation, involving the transplantation of bone, has even been devised. Recognition of the standing of the department was indicated during the past year by the Governor's appointment of its director as the medical member of the Crippled Children's Commission for the State of New Jersey. THE YEAR'S WORK DEMANDS for care in 1940 continued to increase as they have done in almost every year since the hospital was opened. During the year 5,278 patients received 60,100 patient days of care, as compared with 5,107 patients and 56,027 days in the previous year. These yearly increases cannot continue in the present buildings, for the service in most departments has now reached a ceiling beyond which it cannot go. We have a waiting list which gradually grows longer, and we are worried by the growing number of patients whose admission we must put off until suitable beds are available. We ask forbearance from all our friends when they hear of patients whom we are unable to admit, or when they themselves have such an experience. The reason is simply that we cannot crowd more beds or more patients into space already filled beyond proper capacity. Another reason is that whenever we have empty beds in some departments, they may not be suitable for some patients requiring care, as illustrated on a later page.
Our hospital is a community institution and our wish is to familiarize the community as fully as possible with the work that we are doing. For that purpose we have issued our annual report for 1940 in a new form which we hope will present the main features of our hospital's service in an interesting way. Instead of confining ourselves to departmental reports we have included brief special articles on subjects of current interest to the general public. Again we wish to extend our thanks to the many friends whose kindly thoughts and deeds have so greatly aided us in our work. To the Staff, the Auxiliaries, the County Board of Freeholders, contributing municipalities, individual contributors and the general public, whose interest in the hospital is so often shown, we express our appreciation in behalf of the ill and injured who come to us for care. We are particularly grateful for the friendly labors of those about to carry through our building fund campaign. Our prayers go with them, and our most earnest hope that through their efforts the new building may soon rise, for indeed we need it most urgently. SISTER M. ALPHONSUS, Administrator. BERGEN COUNTY'S HEALTH THE epidemic of influenza in 1918, with its high mortality, was largely aggravated by its complete unexpectedness and by a lack of hospital preparation for it under the stress of war, with thousands of men living under unusual conditions in the nation's training cantonments. That epidemic, not to speak of others more frightful in the long past, demonstrated how helpless even skilled doctors can find themselves when they are faced with a lack of ordinary hospital facilities for acute victims. Thus today, with the trend of our thinking more and more toward preventive medicine and with the recent flu scare to put us on guard, the responsibility for the health of a hugely populated section such as Bergen County cannot but lie heavily on the consciences of its three great general hospitals. Bergen County is woefully under-hospitalized. In that regard cold facts and figures speak for themselves, for the county is the third largest in New Jersey as to population, and yet there are fifteen counties in the state far ahead of it in hospital facilities. Beyond this, to aggravate the county's shortage of hospital beds, we are faced with a public which is growing more and more hospital- minded. The public has learned of preventive medicine, and now it flocks to our hospital laboratories for investigative tests, as witness the more than 42,000 laboratory tests made by Holy Name Hospital last year. At the same time, more and more expectant mothers are demanding hospitalization. This growing hospital-mindedness should be a pleasant fact for contemplation by those who are interested in preserving a high standard of public health. Hospitals have, to a degree, stimulated it by their own missionary work in making the public realize the dangers of disease and its spread, as well as the perils of childbirth-its perfect naturalness as a function of womanhood, but also its extreme seriousness, requiring the best of care for mother and child during the pre-natal and post- natal periods. But now that we have attained this result, we in Bergen County can very logically be accused of an inconsistency. We cannot supply a requirement which we have stimulated ourselves. Now that the public is on the alert, pathologically speaking--now that it demands hospitalization, we are unable fully to meet the demand. This situation is not one of embarrassment alone, however. It contains an element of danger. A major disaster or an epidemic in this area would present a simple but unsolvable problem of lack of bed capacity for accident victims or acute cases. Even in the normal course of affairs, being over-crowded as we are now, the danger of greater over-crowding is for the individual patient just as serious. It is ever present as long as accident and disease continue to operate on an invisible schedule If chance and probability. All this is why Holy Name Hospital plans an expansion of its plant in the coming year. Bergen County having described a phenomenal growth in the last five years, there is nothing to indicate that this growth will not continue, though perhaps at a more moderate speed. Bergen County's hospitals today, as always, stand as guardians of the county's health. They cannot, however, as voluntary hospitals, expand to meet the county's growth unless the public comes forward with definite financial assistance. We believe in this near-crisis the public will not fail us, nor any other Bergen County hospital, when a sincere appeal, founded on logic and good sense, is made. FRANK C. MCCORMACK, M.D., Medical Director. PROGRESS IN ANESTHESIA FROM the time Holy Name Hospital became outstanding as a pioneer in the use of spinal anesthesia under the leadership of Dr. Pitkin, the Anesthetic Department has continued to investigate and put into practical service new methods of alleviating pain. During recent years the use of spinal anesthesia has continued at the hospital. Rapid strides being made by the science of anesthesiology, however, have contributed several other new anesthetic methods which are in considerable use. More and more the hospital is resorting to intravenous anesthesia. Many authorities believe this to be the anesthetic method of the future. They are using it with increasing frequency as fast as new phases of intravenous application are deemed safe and practical. In the last two or three years, the Anesthetic Department has employed cyclopropane increasingly as an inhalant. In this regard, Holy Name Hospital has developed to a very high degree modem safeguards in handling volatile gases. In the last year in a wide variety of operative problems, the hospital has successfully used nitrous oxide, ether and ethylene among the inhalants, and novocaine, nupercaine, pontocaine, spinocaine, and neospinocaine in spinal anesthesia and nerve blocking. Spinocaine and neospinocaine have been created by Dr. Pitkin in his experiments with this anesthetic group. The hospital is tending more and more in its use of inhaled gases to the technic known as the "closed method" of application. By this method, the patient, as far as his respiratory function is concerned, is completely secluded from the air of the operating room. His oxygen supply is furnished in mixture with the anesthetic, his carbon dioxide is absorbed by soda lime and his breathing is under the complete control of the anesthetist from beginning to end of the operative period.
HOLY NAME HoSPITAL'S School of Nursing was established in 1925. The hospital is accredited by the American Medical Association and the American College of Surgeons. The various courses of study offered in the School of Nursing are approved by the Department of Nursing of the State of New Jersey. Its aims and purposes are: 1. To prepare young women spiritually, intellectually, physically, socially, and esthetically to give skilled nursing care to the whole individual patient. A certificate of graduation from an accredited high school is required. To be eligible for a qualifying certificate to admit the candidate to the profesional study of registered nursing, the course in high school must include: English, four years; Science, three years, including Gen- eral Science, Biology and Chemistry; Social Studies, two years; Mathematics, one year. The school is desirous of not only promoting educational interests, but also of fostering, to the fullest extent, the spiritual welfare of its students. Courses in Ethics, Psychology and Religion are given by the Chaplain of the Hospital. Credit for these courses will be accorded by Seton Hall College to students who are desirous of pursuing the course of study leading to the Bachelor's Degree. An annual health examination is included for all students during their course of study. In case of illness, the hospital extends full privileges of medical care to the students. The dietary program of the school is under the supervision of the dietary department of the Hospital. Individual rooms are provided for students in residence. A vacation period of one month is granted annually. Courses for Fall Semester, 1940, were as follows: Anatomy and Physiology, Case Study, Chemistry, Contagious Diseases, Ethics, Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat biseases, First Aid, Materia Medica II, Medicine Applied to Nursing, Nursing Arts, Operating Room Technique, Professional Adjustments I, Psychology, Public Health Nursing, Religion I, II, III, Surgery Applied to Nursing. Courses for Spring Semester, 1941, are as follows: Dental Surgery, Dietetics, Elementary Materia Medica, Ethics, First Aid, Gynecology, History of Nursing, Microbiology, Nursing Arts, Obstetrics, Operating Room Technique, Orthopedics, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Psychology, Religion I, II, III, Sociology. MATERNITY SERVICE DESPITE the present apparently commodious quarters, continually increasing demands for service necessitate the doubling of space and equipment in the Maternity Department. This is evidenced by the tripling of the birth record of the hospital in the fifteen years of its existence. In 1926 a total of 366 babies was born here. In 1940 there were 1,025 births, without a maternal death. The 1940 record also showed that twenty-two Caesarian births took place, including a pair of Caesarian twins. Ten other sets of twins were born in the hospital during the year. The present equipment of the Maternity Department includes a nursery of 42 bassinets--often crowded--and 42 beds for mothers. Temperature and humidity of the nursery are regulated mechanically. The most modem spray shower equipment is used in bathing the babies. All bedding and clothing are "Autoclaved" (sterilized under steam pressure) after being returned from the laundry. In the isolation ward each baby has a separate unit--a cabinet in which his clothing is kept and upon which he is bathed and dressed, and a bassinet--with which no other child comes in contact. Great importance is attached by the Maternity Department to the care of its new-born babies. For this reason more graduate nurses are employed in the new-born section than in any other department. Individual formulas, special attention to incubator babies, administration of oxygen, individual instructions to the mother as to the care of the baby at home--these are but a few of the many services which, although routine to the hospital, may mean life itself to these most delicate little patients.
HOLY NAME HoSPITAL is one of nearly 3,000 voluntary hospitals in the United States. Do you know what a "voluntary" hospital is? The term will be easier to understand if you will consider the three broad types of hospitals. VOLUNTARY: non-governmental, non-pront hospitals conducted by independent groups of citizens for the public welfare. They consist mostly of "general" hospitals, supplying general medical and surgical care. GOVERNMENTAL: Federal--mostly for members of the armed forces and their dependents; State--mostly for mental patients; County--mostly for tubercular patients; City--mostly for general or communicable-disease patients. PROPRIETARY: relatively small in size and often owned by doctors; conducted without legal restriction as to profit. The total number of all types of registered hospitals in the United States is more than 6,000, and they admit about 10,000,000 patients every year. Nearly two-thirds of those patients--about 6,000,000--are treated in hospitals of the voluntary type. It is important to understand that a voluntary hospital does not receive automatic support through taxation, as in the case of Government hospitals, but must stand on its own feet and justify its continued existence by the character of service it supplies to paying patients as well as to non-paying patients. Most voluntary hospitals, like those in Bergen County, receive some auxiliary support out of tax funds. However, in Bergen County and in many other localities, such support amounts to much less than the free and below cost care given by these hospitals to patients who are unable to pay in full or at all. While Federal, State, County and City hospitals have provided the most practical and satisfactory means of caring for certain special types of patients, the voluntary hospital has supplied the most satisfactory answer to the need of local communities for general medical and surgical care. The voluntary hospital is a successful expression of the American tradition of free enterprise, local responsibility and community cooperation. MESSAGE FROM THE CHAPLAIN THE present day trend of philosophy translated into action, as evidenced by the spectacle of the modem world of chaos and tunnoil, seems to indicate quite clearly that men and nations have lost the idea of the dignity of the individual and the marvelous influence for good one can wield in his own small sphere. True Christian philosophy has ever taught the dignity of the individual, the nobility of his calling, the individual influence each one can and must wield for good. Conscious of the individual's dignity and his power for good in his allotted sphere, Holy Name Hospital has throughout the fifteen years of its existence striven to minister to man in his individual needs so that relieved from infirmity he can be returned a useful member of the community. In all the various fields of work in the world to which man applies himself, there is no more noble task than that with which men rightly surround the aureole of glory: the sublimity of motherhood. The hospital has prided itself on keeping abreast with modem progress in meeting the requirements at this crucial moment in human life, but the ever rapid growth of our communities has compelled the Sister governing body to secure more room in the proposed erection of the new wing. Holy Name plans to make every adequate convenience possible to the expectant mother and the world's most priceless possession, her baby. It is because like the Church, of which the hospital is a unit, Holy Name regards the individual's needs that she proposes the new addition. No greater contribution can come to the community of Bergen County than this center which will provide a worthy advent for its citizenry into the world. REV. LEO. J. MARTIN Chaplain.
This financial summary is intended to present a clear and understandable statement of interest to the general public. Practically all executive, supervisory and technical positions in the hospital are held by Sisters, who receive no compensation beyond their maintenance and small allowances for such items as clothing and educational charges. To afford a true picture of the cost of running and hospital, therefore, the value of the Sisters' unpaid services to the extent of approximately $31,000 has been include as an operating expense. This is a conservative figure based on less than prevailing salaries for the positions held. While it was not actually paid by the hospital, on the other hand a considerably larger sum was not charged for depreciation. Most of the capital cost of the hospital as it stands today was provided without cost to the people of Bergen County. ACTIVITIES OF CENTRAL AUXILIARY THE original obligation assumed by Central Auxiliary of Holy Name Hospital was the furnishing of all gauze by the hospital. But the auxiliaries steadily increased their activities every year, until now each of the twenty-two auxiliaries annually fulfills four major Central obligations. If the efforts of the individual auxiliary more than support these obligations, they then use their surplus moneys to supply some major gift to the hospital. The first of these activities is the Linen Shower which is held annually, the Second Sunday in May. At this time the hospital linen supply is completely replenished. Each auxiliary arranges and decorates its own booth in the auditorium of the nurses' home, carrying out the blue and white colors of Central Auxiliary. In June Central Auxiliary entertains the graduating class of nurses at a tea during class week and each member of the class is presented with a gift. On the last Sunday in October all of the auxiliaries participate in the Harvest Festival. Booths in the nurses' auditorium are decorated in the seasonal colors of orange and yellow. The booths display the gifts of canned goods, fruit, fruits juices, yearly supply of ice cream mix, jellies, jams and beverages. We again entertain the friends of the hospital, who are invited to visit the various departments in the hospital. Then the season of Christmas is with us. Each auxiliary is represented on the committee of women who decorate the hospital, chapel and nurses' home. The entire staff, personnel and all the patients at the hospital are our guests at Christmas dinner. Holy Name Hospital greets the Christmastide in a beautiful blue and silver dress and the visitors are filled with the joys of the Holy Season.
This year, in addition to our usual activies we are cooperating with the building fund campaign in every possible manner to insure the success of the campaign for the new hospital wing. Throughout the year our director Sister St. Jude is ever our guide and inspiration. Central Auxiliary holds two benefit parties during the year. We are deeply grateful to our many friends whose generous assistance is not only encouraging, but makes possible the extended scope of our auxiliary work. Our newest obligation is the complete X-Ray equipment for the new wing. Our affiliated auxiliaries welcome new members and WE extend our invitation to YOU to join with us and assis the Sisters of St. Joseph of Holy Name Hospital in furthering their widespread charity. Irene D. Pindar, M. D., President of Central Auxiliary ACTIVITIES OF THE LOCAL AUXILIARIES ONCE A YEAR a joint all-day surgical dressings meeting is held by all auxiliaries. In 1925 the quantity of gauze used by the hospital was 10,000 yards. In 1940 the yarclage was 90,000. Each auxiliary also has its own surgical dressings meeting. The types of dressings made are appendectomy sponges, ear sponges, laparatomy sponges, tape sponges and 2 x 2 and 4 x 4 dressings. Each auxiliary has its own Sewing Chairman under the direction of the Central Sewing Chairman. The hospital is kept supplied with various size sheets, towels, tray covers, sterile wraps, gowns, glove cases, bassinet lining, clysis cases, hot water bottle covers, bed pan covers, drum covers, points, surgical stockings, caps, gowns, masks, mitts, sleeves, binders and pillow cases. MAJOR GIFTS BY THE AUXILIARIES FOR 1940
CONSULTING STAFF
A voluntary general hospital serving all of Bergen County and portions of adjoiningcounties. Approved by the American College of Surgeons. Registered by the American Medical Association. Approved for the training of internes. Member of the American Hospital Association, the Catholic Hospital Association, the New Jersey Hospital Association and the Newark Diocesan Hospital Council of New Jersey. Member of the Associated Hospital Service of New York and the Hospital Service Plan of New Jersey. School of Nursing Approved by the New Jersey State Board of Nurse Examiners.
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Teaneck Public Library
840 Teaneck Road, Teaneck, NJ 07666 Tel.: (201) 837-4171, Fax: (201) 837-0410 |
In this age of constantly changing principles and feverish unrest there is little time for reflection or retrospection; the accent is rather on 
A VOLUNTARY HOSPITAL 
