A new $125,000 commitment by TD Bank Group will help train hospital nurses in the fast-moving field of patient care.
The donation from the TD Grants in Medical Excellence program was pledged last week through the Victoria Hospitals Foundation's Building Care Together campaign. It includes $25,000 per year for five years to support training that will touch roughly 1,200 nurses at the Royal Jubilee Hospital's Patient Care Centre.
On an ongoing basis, nurses are updated in such areas as critical care techniques and infection prevention and control. For example, the protocol for monitoring for potential infection spread changed when the Patient Care Centre opened with single-patient rooms, a switch from having multiple patients in a room.
Other necessary training involves learning new methods for keeping track of patient medications and becoming familiar with the culturally different care needs of First Nations patients.
The donation will help pay for nurses to attend conferences and workshops, then do in-service training with hospital colleagues.
“The Patient Care Centre is a leading-edge hospital that attracts exceptional medical professionals,” Leslee Farrell, co-chair of the Building Care Together campaign, said in a release. “TD Grants in Medical Excellence will benefit many of these care providers and educators. Even more importantly, it will directly benefit patients in our hospitals through improved care."
The campaign has now received pledges totalling $12.94 million, more than halfway toward its goal of raising $25 million for staff training and medical equipment for the state-of-the-art Patient Care Centre.