Paediatric Clinics
Paediatric Sickle Cell Clinic / Paediatric Oncology Satellitte Clinic
As your community hospital, Rouge Valley is focused on catering to the specific health care needs of its communities.
Partnerships, such as with The Hospital For Sick Children, have allowed us to bring important treatments and care closer to home for residents of Scarborough, Pickering, Ajax and Whitby.
The Hospital for Sick Children offers an informative website you may also find valuable: About Kids' Health.
Paediatric Satellite Oncology Clinic
What it brings to the community / Overview
Overview
Rouge Valley brings children’s cancer care closer to home
The opening of Rouge Valley Health System’s Paediatric Oncology Satellite Clinic in 2005 means children and their families receive specialized cancer care closer to home.
In partnership with The Hospital For Sick Children and the Paediatric Oncology Group of Ontario (POGO), the clinic offers a variety of services including: chemotherapy; blood work, transfusions; vital sign monitoring; medication administration; X-rays, CT Scans and ultrasound tests; and more.
Located on the seventh floor of Rouge Valley Centenary, the clinic is part an overall drive to offer specialized care close to home to the residents of east Toronto and west Durham. For six-year-old patient Dawson Fraser, of Uxbridge in Durham, it’ll mean fewer trips to the Hospital For Sick Children, in downtown Toronto. He and his mother, Debbie Fraser, participated official opening in April 2005.
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The new clinic will benefit children and their families in our communities, such as Dawson's family. Dawson’s numerous "bravery beads" belie the seriousness of his struggle with stage-four cancer. Given to him from the Hospital for Sick Children for every procedure and test he's had, the beads are recognition of his and his family’s bravery for his hard fought remission. |
"We know there is a need for our new clinic and are delighted with our collaboration with Sick Kids and POGO to help patients and parents like Debbie Fraser," says Sheri Ferkl, Manager of Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Paediatrics with Rouge Valley.
Yvette Dalrymple, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Acute Care Nurse Practitioner with Rouge Valley, adds, "We are proud to offer this clinic for children and parents, who now won’t necessarily have to take a day off work and school to come for treatment. For example, we’ve had that kind of positive feedback from parents at our Paediatric Sickle Cell Clinic, which we opened in November."
Rouge Valley will work closely with the Hospital For Sick Children. When a child, or teenager, is referred to the Rouge Valley clinic, the Hospital For Sick Children will send the patient’s history and treatment plan to ensure continuity of care.
Ferkl adds, "While the child is at Rouge Valley Centenary, our clinical team will communicate with the contact nurse and oncologist at Sick Kids to keep them informed of the child’s progress and treatments."
Among the features of the clinic are a family lounge, three in-patient rooms and a clinic room.
Clinic hours will be from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Parents may visit 24 hours a day.
On hand for interviews today are: Dr. Rosemary Moodie, Chief of Paediatrics; Sheri Ferkl, Manager of Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Paediatrics; Yvette Dalrymple, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Acute Care Nurse Practitioner; Lynn Gibson, Nurse Clinician; and Debbie Fraser, mother of Dawson.
Rouge Valley thanks its many other supporters of the new clinic including: the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario; Mead Johnson; and Home Depot (Scarborough-Eglington Store).
What it brings to the community
More Time.
Ask Debbie Fraser what Rouge Valley Health System’s new Paediatric Oncology Satellite Clinic means to families like hers and she’ll tell you the most important thing is more time with their children.
"We’ve been to Sick Kids hundreds of times. Families will travel less and stay closer to home for their children’s treatment," says the Uxbridge resident, who is also a registered nurse with Rouge Valley.
Her six-year-old son Dawson’s numerous "bravery beads," worn around his neck, belie the seriousness of his struggle with stage-four cancer. The beads, given to him from the Hospital for Sick Children for every procedure and test since his diagnosis in 2002, are indeed recognition of his and his family’s bravery for his hard fought remission from neuroblastoma.
The clinic, in partnership with Sick Kids Hospital and the Paediatric Oncology Group of Ontario (POGO), will begin in May, allowing children to receive chemotherapy treatments, blood work, X-rays, CT Scans, medication administration and more on the seventh floor of Rouge Valley’s Centenary hospital in Scarborough, about 40 minutes from Uxbridge and much closer than Sick Kids in downtown Toronto. Among the features of the Paediatric Oncology Clinic are a family lounge, three in-patient rooms and a clinic room.
Julie Goldstein, Rouge’s Program General Manager for Women and Children’s Health, says she’s glad the "long road" of dealing with "tight budgets" and many challenges has resulted in the opening of the community clinic.
Goldstein thanked the clinic’s team for broadening their skills, in partnership with Sick Kids.
Sheri Ferkl, Rouge’s Manager of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Paediatrics, says, "We know there is a need for our new clinic and are delighted with our collaboration with Sick Kids and POGO to help patients and parents like Debbie Fraser."
Yvette Dalrymple, Clinical Nurse Specialist and Acute Care Nurse Practitioner with Rouge Valley, says, "We are proud to offer this clinic for children and parents, who now won’t necessarily have to take a day off work and school to come for treatment. We’ve had that kind of positive feedback, for example, from parents at our Paediatric Sickle Cell Clinic, which we opened in November."
The new clinic is part of Rouge’s drive to offer more key services to its many communities including Scarborough, Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, Uxbridge and others.
Rouge Valley continues to work closely with the Hospital For Sick Children. When a child, or teenager, is referred to the Rouge Valley satellite clinic, the Hospital For Sick Children will send the patient’s history and treatment plan to ensure continuity of care.
Ferkl adds, "While the child is at Rouge Valley Centenary, our clinical team will communicate with the contact nurse and oncologist at Sick Kids to keep them informed of the child’s progress and treatments."
Dr. Mark L Greenberg, Senior Staff Oncologist with the Hospital for Sick Children, participated in the clinic’s recent opening. Greenberg says, "The Rouge Valley team has done an amazing job in launching this program, and I have no doubt that the program will be a huge success and will be able to serve the eastern Greater Toronto Area and beyond with impeccable care and in the process, make the lives of the children and families much easier."
He added that the satellite clinic is "about offering families somewhere familiar and comfortable" for their child’s cancer care closer to home.
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Rouge Valley Health System consists of five community health sites, including two hospitals – Rouge Valley Centenary, located in east Scarborough, with 366 beds and Rouge Valley Ajax and Pickering, located in Ajax, with 144 beds. Together more than 300 general practitioners and 180 specialist physicians provide care for a full range of health issues, from paediatric to geriatric care. Both hospitals have round-the-clock emergency departments.
Paediatric Sickle Cell Clinic
Rouge Valley Health System officially and proudly opened our new regional Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) clinic on Nov. 1, 2004.
Scarborough and West Durham patients now have access to a unique and key service closer to home.
Our healthcare area has a large number of people who need sickle cell healthcare.
That’s why we’ve developed the first satellite sickle cell clinic in Ontario, in consultation with Sick Kids’ Hospital. Since November 2004, our clinic has been open two Mondays a month, at Rouge Valley Centenary, with an expected 100-150 visits a year.
Rouge Valley Health System has developed an interdisciplinary core team to co-manage the outpatient work performed by Sick Kids.Some 80 to 90 children are treated each week at Sick Kids, which is the reason for developing Rouge Valley’s satellite clinic, where many of the patients live.
At Rouge Valley Health System’s Centenary site, a pediatrician and hematologist, with special expertise with sickle cell disease, provide care for 80 patients. The Rouge Valley team also includes a Clinical Nurse Specialist/Nurse Practitioner, a specially trained nurse clinician, pediatric social worker and child life specialist. The team uses protocols developed by Sick Kids to manage the children acutely, dealing with short-term crisis as they arise.
Children visit the clinic for blood work and for education. In partnership with the patients and families, the team will decide on methods of treatment, follow-up, and whether this will take place at Sick Kids or at Rouge Valley Centenary.
Education and support are crucial, not only for the children of this hereditary disease, but also for their parents who are often plagued by feelings of guilt. Children with sickle cell disease also benefit from the support of child life specialists to help them deal with the pressures of their health condition.
With this out-patient component, Rouge Valley is now able to offer a more complete spectrum of health care from initial diagnosis, treatment and providing the family with education and support up-front, rather than only dealing with acute care aspects of SCD patients.
Rouge Valley’s Sickle Cell Clinic is on the 12th floor of our Centenary hospital site, at 2867 Ellesmere Road, in northeast Scarborough.
Sickle Cell Disease (SCD), which includes sickle cell anemia and related problems, is a frightening genetic condition affecting people and their descendents from Africa, the Mediterranean and certain other high-risk populations because of its evolutionary connection to hemoglobin, red cells, and malaria.
Many in Scarborough’s population are of African descent, which is a community at risk for Sickle Cell Disorder.
SCD, which produces sickle cell anemia, is a genetic condition that afflicts people in high-risk populations, including people of African descent. The correlation being that, in its mildest form, the disease confers resistance to malaria.
Hemoglobin is the protein responsible for transferring oxygen to the body tissues as it rides the blood in the red blood cells. Normal red cells are flexible, round-edged and shaped a bit like little doughnuts, thanks to the normal hemoglobin they contain. They slip easily through the tiniest blood vessels.
In Sickle Cell Disease, a glitch in the DNA codes for a defective form of hemoglobin. Red cells carrying this defective hemoglobin, once they give up their oxygen, change into strange elongated crescent shapes, and lose their flexibility. They can block blood vessels, causing chronic pain, swelling in the joints, infections, and fever. Such a blockage, or embolism, can appear in the brain, resulting in a stroke. Or it can cut off the blood supply to another part of the body, producing an excruciating Sickle Cell Crisis. The condition is life threatening and incurable.
Children inherit the full-blown form of sickle cell disease if they acquire the gene from both parents. People who inherit the gene from only one parent are carriers.
SCD afflicts people of African, Mediterranean, Asian, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, Central American and South American descent because they evolved in the presence of malaria. In Africa malaria is endemic. It’s caused by several related mosquito-borne parasitic microorganisms called plasmodia, which infest red blood cells. People with normal red cells are the perfect hosts, and, untreated, often die of malaria. People with sickle cell disease are poor hosts for malaria because of the shape of their red cells, but they suffer the full range of sickle cell disease symptoms.
People with the sickle cell gene from one parent only – called sickle cell trait – have enhanced resistance to malaria because some of their red cells take on those distorted crescent shapes that deter the plasmodia. That is why they have historically survived without most of the sickle cell symptoms, to pass on the trait to their children.
