by Vickie Jenkins

The Birth Center at Deaconess hospital features eighteen elegantly appointed single-room maternity suites that allow mothers to share the birth experience with family in a beautiful, home-like atmosphere by staying in the same room for labor, delivery, recovery and postpartum care.  Nine-bed level-II NICU provides excellent care for babies who need additional medical attention. The NICU is staffed by registered nurses and board-certified neonatologists.  One-on-one nurse to patient ratio throughout the entire labor and delivery process.
Deaconess Hospital in Oklahoma City is known for their outstanding doctors and nurses. Picture: From L-R: Tanya Bogan, RN,  Yvonne Silberman RNC-OB,  Jonna Criscuoli, RN and Supervisor Trisha Brown, RNC-OB show the Sleep Sack Swaddle that each newborn receives at Deaconess.  The Sleep Sack is a Safe Sleep Initiative that was introduced February 14, 2014.
Here are some Safe Sleep Swaddle Tips to ensure a safe sleep for your baby. Always place baby to sleep on his or her back at naptime and night time.  Use a crib that meets current safety standards with a firm mattress that fits snugly and is covered with only a tight-fitting crib sheet.  Remove all blankets, comforters and toys from your baby’s sleep area (this includes loose blankets, bumpers, pillows and positioners).  The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests using a wearable blanket instead of loose blankets to keep your baby warm.  Offer a pacifier when putting baby to sleep. If breastfeeding, introduce pacifier after one month or after breastfeeding has been established.  Breastfeed, if possible, but when finished, put your baby back to sleep in his or her separate safe sleep area alongside your bed.  Room share, but don’t bed share.  Bed sharing can put a child at risk of suffocation.  Never  put your baby to sleep on any soft surface (adult beds, sofas, chairs, water beds, quilts, sheep skins etc.)  Never dress your baby too warmly for sleep.  Never allow anyone to smoke around your baby.  Deaconess Hospital is proud of their new Hugs and Kisses Security System as of January 2015.  The Hugs system offers the reliability that you and your staff can depend on every day to keep your infants safe.  The Hugs tag attaches in seconds and is automatically enrolled in the software.  Protection can start right in the delivery room.  The Hugs system requires no manual checks of infant tags or other devices to make sure they’re working. The Hugs system software -continually monitors the status of all devices, and will generate an alarm if something goes wrong.  There is an automatic mother/infant matching.  With the Kisses® option, the Hugs system automatically confirms that the right baby is with the right mother. There are no buttons to push and no numbers to match.
Deaconess Hospital offers Certified Lactation Consultants that round on all post-partum and NICU mothers.  Here you will find Neonatologists and Neonatal Nurse Practitioners on call 24/7 for high risk deliveries.

Artist Harold Stevenson  honored at Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Junior Museum of Art

Photography and Text by Terry “Travels with Terry” Zinn  t4z@aol.com

Idabel, Oklahoma native artist Harold Stevenson was recently reunited with friends and a selection of his artwork dating back to 1953 at the University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Junior Museum of Art. “The Nature of Man: Paintings and Drawings by Harold Stevenson,” will be on exhibit through May 2015, and was generously donated to the Museum by childhood friend and art collector, Ross Dugan.
The museum has previous works of Stevenson in its collection including his monumental series, “The Great Society” of a hundred larger than life portraits of his neighbors, friends and acquaintances generated in Idabel, Oklahoma in 1966.  Besides being in many private collections, Stevenson works are in the collection of the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
As descried in the gallery brochure, “The Nature of Man, explores Harold Stevenson’s investigation of masculinity from his early career in 1960’s to more recent works from the 1990’s. The male body in Stevenson’s works represents variously an expression of eroticism or memory of a reference to art history…. he produced naturalistic yet simplified depiction of the human body, frequently using a monumental scale and unconventional or unusual perspectives.”  This style was rejected by the critics of the 1950s who were more interested in non-objective abstraction.  But Harold’s creative artistic lust would not be quelled and his prolific painting continued to great heights.
A self-taught artist, at an early age in Idabel, Oklahoma, he moved away from his home’s kitchen table and set up his own gallery/studio in a second story of a main street Idabel building.  From then on, his art took him to the University of Oklahoma, on to Paris, with homes there, in Key West, Wainscott Long Island, Long Island City and a cabin in the woods in Idabel.  This energetic octogenarian now lives in an apartment in his beloved Idabel.
It was a fitting honor to have Stevenson and his childhood friend and benefactor Ross Dugan at the intimate gallery event, where his longtime friend Mary Jane Rutherford and the Fred Jones Junior Museum of Art Interim Director Dr. Mark White, commemorate this reunion and celebrate of Stevenson’s approaching 86th birthday.
It is not often that an artist and his friends have the opportunity to celebrate the man and his art near the end of a career, as does the Fred Jones Junior Museum of Art with this exhibition.  The museum is open to the public free of charge and as always presents and celebrates an eclectic exhibition of fine art.  Harold Stevenson is as original as his art, and the Nature of Man exhibition could be called the Nature of Harold, as it depicts his personality as well as artistic expression.

Authors Note:  I first met Harold at an impromptu Luncheon in Oklahoma City in 1995, hosted by Dr.  Duane Moore.   From this first meeting I knew I was in the presence of a celebrity with an extraordinary talent of telling tales of his worldly experiences with such notables as Andy Warhol and Peggy Guggenheim, among others.  His love of a luncheon ~ or anytime ~ martini reintroduced me to that cocktail of elegance and joy, resulting in my own photographic interpretation of the Martini through my worldwide travels.  www.martinitravels.com    Since 1995 I have visited Harold in New York, Dallas and of course Idabel, documenting his life and creativity in photographs and recorded interviews.
For Fred Jones Junior Museum of Art, times and more information visit, http://www.ou.edu/fjjma.html

by Mike Lee Staff Writer

Pam Spanbauer, RN, BSN, MEd, may be retired from her nursing practice but her impact on healthcare in Oklahoma will be felt for generations to come.
As the governor’s appointee to the Physician Manpower & Training Commission, Spanbauer is the only nurse on the board that helps ensure healthcare for thousands of rural Oklahomans.
Now the board chair, Spanbauer helps make sure that small communities in Oklahoma get the competent and professional physicians they so desperately need.
Spanbauer also currently serves as the vice president of the Oklahoma Nurses Association.
The commission is a task-force established in the 1970s.
“They have funding to help fund physicians in training to go out into the rural areas in Oklahoma,” Spanbauer said. “In Oklahoma we have so much rural area. In these farming communities the last thing they can do is take a day and drive to the city to get healthcare and drive back.
“It’s really important especially with the fact we don’t have many hospitals in the rural area.”
Spanbauer was raised in a small town in North Carolina. She had a single doctor growing up who took care of her entire family.
“If we had to have gone to the city we probably wouldn’t have gotten healthcare,” said Spanbauer, whose family lived 50 miles from the nearest hospital. “I’ve always had that small-town respect.”
She says the reality is that most doctors are going into specialty practices. Those who head to family medicine will stick closer to more populated areas.
The commission will cover a significant portion of a doctor’s tuition for a commitment to be the physician in a rural area.
“Many of the physicians actually wind up staying in that area after their commitment is done,” Spanbauer said. “If it weren’t for that a lot of doctors wouldn’t even know there are these opportunities and how great healthcare can be in a small community.”
Spanbauer and the commission review each applicant and decide the best place to match each doctor. Communities routinely send in requests for physicians to cover their population.
The mission of the Physician Manpower Training Commission is to enhance medical care in rural and underserved areas of the state by administering residency, internship and scholarship incentive programs that encourage medical and nursing personnel to practice in rural and underserved areas. Further, PMTC is to upgrade the availability of health care services by increasing the number of practicing physicians, nurses and physician assistants in rural and underserved areas of Oklahoma.
Subsequently the Oklahoma Legislature has added the responsibility of a Physician Placement Program, Nursing Student Assistance Program, the FP Resident Rural Program, the Physician Community Match Program and the Physician Assistant Scholarship Program. Spanbauer says the commission is guided in all the programs by a sense of stewardship which requires that maximum effort, both individual and organizational, be utilized to increase the number of practicing physicians, nurses and physician assistants in Oklahoma and, particularly, in rural and underserved areas of the state.
“I’ve always had a strong desire to give back in some way which is why I love being retired,” Spanbauer said. “I loved what I did when I was working but now it’s like I can give back. When I was working I didn’t have as much time.”
During her career, Spanbauer served as an EMT and drove an ambulance for Children’s Hospital. She also helped start the MediFlight program and later spent nearly her entire nursing career at Mercy.
“I had an opportunity at that time to see how spread out everything in Oklahoma is,” she said. “We would drive to pick up a baby and see how some of those hospitals barely had enough to get by. They didn’t have all the equipment we had in the city to take care of these premature babies.
“I’ve always been very passionate about wanting everybody to be able to have access to care. It’s a fact that people don’t.”
Spanbauer says the commission is charged with five high-priority goals:
1. Work to improve the balance of physician manpower distribution in the State of Oklahoma, both by type of practice and by geographic location;
2. Aid accredited physician training facilities in the establishment of additional primary medical care and family practice internship and residency training programs by sharing in the cost of these programs;
3. Assist Oklahoma communities in selecting and financing qualified medical and osteopathic interns/residents to participate in the Physician Community Match Program;
4. Assist Oklahoma communities, in any manner possible, in contacting medical and osteopathic students, interns and residents, or other physicians (inside and outside Oklahoma) who might wish to practice in Oklahoma;
5. Work with Oklahoma communities and the leadership of Oklahoma’s nurse training institutions to provide nurses for underserved areas of the state.
“It gets back to what medicine is all about and that’s the relationship the doctor has with the patient and the community,” Spanbauer said.
And that’s how Spanbauer makes a difference for future generations to come.

The dialysis unit at INTEGRIS Southwest Medical Center is named in honor of a longtime member of the hospital’s medical staff. The unit was dedicated in memory of Anthony W. Czerwinski, M.D., on Feb. 10. That date was specifically chosen because it would have been his 81st birthday.
The Anthony W. Czerwinski, M.D., Dialysis Unit, as it is now called, is a fitting tribute to a man who committed his life to medicine.
Czerwinski was born Feb. 10, 1934. He began practicing internal medicine and nephrology at INTEGRIS Southwest Medical Center in August 1982. He would remain with the hospital for 32 years. He was still practicing medicine at the time of his passing last November.
Czerwinski, who was lovingly known as “Dr. C,” served as the hospital’s chief of staff for seven years. He held many leadership roles throughout his tenure, serving on the board of directors from 1995 to 2005, as chairman of the medicine department from 2002 to 2007, and on the medical executive committee from 1987 to1993 and then again from 2002 to 2007.
Czerwinski touched many lives and his presence is greatly missed, but his memory will live on forever in the hearts of everyone who knew and loved him.

Mercy Ranks 122 on Forbes List of Top American Employers

Mercy ranks 122 on Forbes’ inaugural “America’s Best Employers” list.
The list of 500 employers spans 25 industries in the U.S. Forbes partnered with Statista.com in asking more than 20,000 American workers one question: on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend your employer to someone else?
Mercy, one of only 25 in the health care category, is in good company; Mayo Clinic ranks 74th overall, followed closely by Kaiser Permanente at 81. Google leads the list, with Facebook coming in at 15 and Apple at 55.
“It’s truly an amazing time to be with Mercy,” said Lynn Britton, president and CEO of Mercy, the fifth largest Catholic health care system in the U.S. “Earlier this spring, we fulfilled a promise to thousands of co-workers in Joplin with a newly rebuilt hospital. Later this year, Mercy will open the world’s first virtual care center, powered by hundreds of the nation’s best telehealth professionals.”

The INTEGRIS James L. Hall, Jr. Center for Mind, Body and Spirit and the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum are hosting a private reception and presentation in remembrance of the 20th Anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.
With the recent expansion of the Memorial, guests will enjoy private tours, wine, hors d’oeuvres and music followed by a presentation from the Center’s Murali Krishna, M.D.  Krishna, president and chief operating officer of INTEGRIS Mental Health and president and co-founder of the James L. Hall, Jr. Center for Mind, Body and Spirit, was on the front lines that day and days that followed. “I have seen it with my own eyes,” recalls Krishna. “Oklahomans are the kindest people on earth. I have seen acts of kindness, acts of compassion – nowhere could top it. I have seen Oklahoma City rise to vibrancy following the acts of terror on April 19, 1995.”
In honor and service of the Oklahoma Standard, Krishna will share his insights and recognize our city for the resilience and growth it has demonstrated during the last 20 years.
The event will take place Thursday, April 23 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, 620 N. Harvey in Oklahoma City.
Ticket cost is $50.00 per person, $500.00 per sponsorship. Victims, family members, survivors and rescue workers are invited to Krishna’s presentation free of charge. Reservations are required. For more information, please contact the INTEGRIS James L. Hall Jr. Center for Mind, Body and Spirit at 405-713-9950.