A hospital is many things to patients and their families. It’s a place where they can face adversity while supported by compassionate caregivers. It can also be a place where they find healing, hope and optimism. In health care, each day brings something new. Patients can live full, comfortable lives with diseases that were once considered terminal. They can go home days or even hours after minimally invasive surgery that would have required a long stay a decade ago.
Day after day, we are inspired by the compassion, ingenuity and hard work of our hospital team.
Last summer, some staff members organized an impromptu outdoor wedding at the General Campus so a terminally ill patient and her fiancé could marry and celebrate their love. Going above the call of duty, the team organized everything from the dress to the venue to help make the family’s wish come true. That was one story that made news headlines, but there are of thousands of other times when our teams go out of their way to help patients.
A pillar of our vision is research. We have globally-recognized researchers from Ottawa, Canada and the world. When their work reaches the stage that it can potentially help patients, the residents of National Capital Region and Nunavut are the first to benefit. This year, our world-class researchers provided new hope for patients with aggressive, early-onset multiple sclerosis (MS). The groundbreaking trial was the first to show the complete, long-term suppression of all inflammatory activity in people with this type of MS. This, too, made headlines.
We continue to make discoveries that enhance the patient experience and use our scarce resources wisely. A new study by our researchers found that almost one-third of patients admitted to our Emergency Departments (ED) for chest pain can be taken off heart monitors. This study could lead to improvements across the health-care system, freeing up those monitored beds for sicker patients and ultimately reducing overall ED wait times.
This was a watershed year for The Ottawa Hospital: our new campus will be built on the site of the former Sir John Carling building. The state-of-the-art care, research and teaching facility will support patient and family-centred care and innovative research for the next century. As we move towards designing and building the new hospital, we’ll work closely with our community to realize our vision of 21st-century care for The National Capital Region.
To our staff members, thank you for everything you do. To our community, thank you for your support and generosity. This is an exciting time for our hospital, for health care, and for our region.
“Inspired by research. Driven by compassion.”
