The Hospital for Sick Children

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The Hospital for Sick Children
The Hospital for Sick Children Logo.svg
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The Hospital for Sick Children from University Avenue
Toronto map.png
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Location in Toronto
Geography
Location555 University Avenue
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M5G 1X8
Coordinates 43°39′26″N79°23′19″W / 43.6571°N 79.3885°W / 43.6571; -79.3885 Coordinates: 43°39′26″N79°23′19″W / 43.6571°N 79.3885°W / 43.6571; -79.3885
Organisation
Care system Medicare
Funding Public hospital
Hospital type Specialist
Affiliated university University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine
Services
Emergency department Pediatric Level 1 Trauma Centre (Tertiary)
Beds453
Speciality Children's Hospital
Helipad TC LID: CNW8
History
Founded1875
Links
Website www.sickkids.ca

The Hospital for Sick Children, corporately branded as SickKids, is a major pediatric teaching hospital located on University Avenue in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Toronto.

A teaching hospital or university hospital is a hospital or medical center that provides medical education and training to future and current health professionals and that is involved in medical research. Teaching hospitals are often affiliated with medical schools and work closely with medical students throughout their period of matriculation, and especially during their clerkship (internship) years. In most cases, teaching hospitals also offer Graduate Medical Education (GME)/ physician residency programs, where medical school graduates train under a supervising (attending) physician to assist with the coordination of care.

University Avenue (Toronto) street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

University Avenue is a major north–south road in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Beginning at Front Street West in the south, the thoroughfare heads north to end at College Street just south of Queen's Park. At its north end, the Ontario Legislative Building serves as a prominent terminating vista. Many of Toronto's most important institutions are located along the eight-lane wide street such as Osgoode Hall and other legal institutions, the Four Seasons Centre, major hospitals conducting research and teaching, and landmark office buildings for the commercial sector, notably major financial and insurance industry firms. The portion of University Avenue between Queen Street West and College Street is laid out as a boulevard, with several memorials, statues, gardens, and fountains concentrated in a landscaped median dividing the opposite directions of travel, giving it a ceremonial character.

Toronto Provincial capital city in Ontario, Canada

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the most populous city in Canada, with a population of 2,731,571 in 2016. Current to 2016, the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA), of which the majority is within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), held a population of 5,928,040, making it Canada's most populous CMA. The city is the anchor of the Golden Horseshoe, an urban agglomeration of 9,245,438 people surrounding the western end of Lake Ontario. Toronto is an international centre of business, finance, arts, and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.

Contents

The hospital's Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning is believed to be the largest pediatric research tower in the world at 69677.28 square metres. [1] Founded in 1875, the hospital was inspired by the example of Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.[ citation needed ]

Great Ormond Street Hospital Hospital in London

Great Ormond Street Hospital is a children's hospital located in the Bloomsbury area of the London Borough of Camden, and a part of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust.

London Capital of the United Kingdom

London is the capital of and largest city in England and the United Kingdom, with the largest municipal population in the European Union. Standing on the River Thames in the south-east of England, at the head of its 50-mile (80 km) estuary leading to the North Sea, London has been a major settlement for two millennia. Londinium was founded by the Romans. The City of London, London's ancient core − an area of just 1.12 square miles (2.9 km2) and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that follow closely its medieval limits. The City of Westminster is also an Inner London borough holding city status. Greater London is governed by the Mayor of London and the London Assembly.

The hospital is located in the Discovery District of Downtown Toronto on University Avenue, adjacent to the Toronto General Hospital and across from Mount Sinai Hospital and the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre—collectively forming a complex known as Hospital Row, each connected by underground tunnels and bridges. The hospital is known for its advertisement campaigns and the largest amounts of donations received for any Canadian hospital.[ citation needed ]

Discovery District Neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

The Discovery District is one of the commercial districts in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It has a high concentration of hospitals and research institutions, particularly those related to biotechnology. The district is roughly bounded by Bloor Street on the north, Bay Street on the east, Dundas Street on the south, and Spadina Avenue on the west.

Downtown Toronto Neighbourhood of Toronto in Ontario, Canada

Downtown Toronto is the main central business district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located entirely within the district of Old Toronto, it is approximately 17 square kilometers in area, bounded by Bloor Street to the north, Lake Ontario to the south, the Don Valley to the east, and Bathurst Street to the west. It is also the location of the City of Toronto government and the Government of Ontario.

Toronto General Hospital Hospital in Ontario, Canada

The Toronto General Hospital (TGH) is a major teaching hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and the flagship campus of University Health Network (UHN). It is located in the Discovery District of Downtown Toronto along a portion of University Avenue known as "Hospital Row"; it is directly north of The Hospital for Sick Children, across Gerrard Street West, and east of Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Mount Sinai Hospital. The hospital serves as a teaching hospital for the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. In 2019, Newsweek ranked TGH as seventh among the top-ten best hospitals in the world. In 2017, the hospital was ranked 1st for research in Canada by Research Infosource.

Funding

Atrium designed by Eberhard Zeidler Atrium, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada (2019).jpg
Atrium designed by Eberhard Zeidler

Medical treatments at the hospital are covered by publicly funded health insurance, as is the case in most other Canadian hospitals. Philanthropy is a critical source of funding for SickKids Hospital that is separate and distinct from government and granting agencies. In 2006/07, financial support from SickKids Foundation to the hospital totalled $72.1 million. The support went towards infrastructure and support for physicians, researchers and scientists who compete for national and international research grants. Next to government, SickKids Foundation is the largest funding agency in child health research, education and care in Canada. The Foundation maintains a fund, called the Herbie Fund, for patients not covered by Canadian health insurance. The fund was established in 1979 to provide for the treatment of Herbie Quiñones, a seven-month-old patient from Brooklyn, New York.

Medicare is an unofficial designation used to refer to the publicly funded, single-payer health care system of Canada. Canada does not have a unified national health care system; instead, the system consists of 13 provincial and territorial health insurance plans that provides universal health care coverage to Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and certain temporary residents. These systems are individually administered on a provincial or territorial basis, within guidelines set by the federal government. The formal terminology for the insurance system is provided by the Canada Health Act and the health insurance legislation of the individual provinces and territories.

History

Victoria Hospital for Sick Children building (now housing Canadian Blood Services) Old Hospital for Sick Children.jpg
Victoria Hospital for Sick Children building (now housing Canadian Blood Services)
Hospital for Sick Children, c. 1915 Toronto Hospital for Sick Children. c. 1915.jpg
Hospital for Sick Children, c. 1915
The Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning The Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning.jpg
The Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning

During the spring of 1875, an eleven-room house was rented for $320 a year by a Toronto women's bible study group led by Elizabeth McMaster. [2] They set up six iron cots and "declared open a hospital 'for the admission and treatment of all sick children.'" Their first patient, a scalding victim named Maggie, came in on April 3. Forty-four patients were admitted to the Hospital in its first year of operation and sixty-seven others were treated in outpatient clinics. [3]

Elizabeth McMaster Canadian humanitarian

Elizabeth McMaster was a Canadian humanitarian and head of the committee which founded the Hospital for Sick Children.

In 1876 the hospital moved to larger facilities. In 1891 the hospital moved from rented premises to a building constructed for it at College and Elizabeth streets where it would remain for sixty years. This old building, known as the Victoria Hospital for Sick Children, is now the Toronto area headquarters of Canadian Blood Services. In 1951 the hospital moved to its present University Avenue location, on the grounds where Canadian-born movie star Mary Pickford's childhood home once stood. [3]

College Street (Toronto) street in Toronto, Canada

College Street is a principal arterial thoroughfare in downtown Toronto, Canada, connecting former streetcar suburbs in the west with the city centre. The street is home to an ethnically diverse population in the western residential reaches, and institutions like the Ontario Legislature and the University of Toronto in the downtown core. At Yonge Street, College continues to the east as Carlton Street.

Victoria Hospital for Sick Children former hospital

Victoria Hospital for Sick Children is a building in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The building served as a hospital until 1951 and currently serves as a blood centre. The building has received a Commendation of Adaptive Re-use from the Toronto Historical Board.

Canadian Blood Services organization

Canadian Blood Services is a not-for-profit charitable organization that operates independently from government. Created through a memorandum of understanding between the federal, provincial and territorial governments, it opened its doors in 1998. Its funding comes primarily from provincial and territorial governments.

In 1972, [4] the hospital was equipped with a rooftop helipad (CNW8). [5] Today, it is one of two downtown Toronto hospitals with a helipad (the other being St. Michael's Hospital) and one of three in Toronto (the third being at Sunnybrook Hospital).

SickKids Hospital underwent a major expansion in 1993 with the construction of a glass-roofed atrium on the east side of the main building. In late 2008, the hospital underwent a major renovation in the emergency wing.

Contributions to medicine

The hospital was an early leader in the fields of food safety and nutrition. In 1908 a pasteurization facility for milk was established at the hospital, the first in Toronto, and 30 years before milk pasteurization became mandatory. [6] Researchers at the hospital invented the infant cereal, Pablum. The research that led to the discovery of insulin took place nearby at the University of Toronto and was soon applied at the hospital. Doctor Frederick Banting, one of the researchers, had served his internship at SickKids Hospital and went on to become an attending physician there. In 1963 William Thornton Mustard developed the Mustard surgical procedure used to help correct heart problems in blue baby syndrome. [6] In 1989, a team of researchers at the hospital discovered the gene responsible for cystic fibrosis. [7]

Controversy

The hospital housed the Motherisk Drug Testing Laboratory. [8] At the request of various child protection agencies 16,000 hair samples were tested from 2005 to 2015. Former Ontario Appeal Court judge Susan Lang reviewed Motherisk Drug Testing Laboratory and determined that they were not qualified to do forensic testing. Susan Lang also stated "That SickKids failed to exercise meaningful oversight over MDTL's work must be considered in the context of the hospital's experience with Dr. Charles Smith". [9] The 2008 Goudge Report found Dr. Charles Smith who's forensic testimony led to wrongful convictions in the deaths of children, was also not qualified to do forensic testing. [10]

See also

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References

Footnotes

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