Giving at the till is a gift from and for the heart. And Greater Victoria shoppers have dug deep and donated $60,000 to the Canadian Tire’s annual Fix-A-Heart campaign.
The funds will pay for two high-tech patient care beds at the Royal Jubilee Hospital’s heart health cardiac care unit. The money was presented Tuesday to the Victoria Hospitals Foundation, which funds 40 per cent of capital equipment purchases every year for the Jubilee and Victoria General Hospital.
The state-of-the-art beds feature a complex array of gadgetry that assist nurses with their work, and add to the well-being of a patient over and beyond letting them get a good night’s sleep. Upwards of 900 patients undergo open heart surgery at the hospital each year.
The beds include weigh scales and can be automatically rotated, for example.
“Without that (donation) it’s not the same,” said Holly Kennedy-Symonds, director of the Vancouver Island Health Authority’s heart health and adult intensive care units. “There’s finite resources and you’re competing for those finite resources.”
emccracken@vicnews.com