The University of Arizona Alumnus / Winter 2010
Diamond Children’s Medical Center
by Gabrielle FimbresBetsy Stuetze stood in the crowded, chaotic hallway at University Medical Center as she received the worst possible news.
Nothing could be done to stop the cancer growing in the bones of her precious daughter, Alex, 13.
“When I was told Alex’s lymphoma turned into leukemia and that 90 percent of her bone marrow was diseased, I was standing in the hallway because there was no place else to go,” recalls Stuetze, whose daughter’s lengthy illness ended with her death in October 2006.
“They were telling me my daughter was going to die. It was horrible, and to have it out in the middle of everything made it so much worse. There was no space for me to cry.”
Stuetze says while the medical care at UMC was tremendous, she wishes there had been a quiet, private room in which she and her husband could grieve.
Her wish is coming true as the $85 million, 116-bed Diamond Children’s Medical Center at University Medical Center prepares to open its doors in late spring or summer 2010. Stuetze, who served as an advisor for the design of the state-of-the-art facility, believes the center will offer comfort to patients and families while saving the lives of more children.
“It’s absolutely going to attract the best doctors and researchers, and those are the people that will save kids’ lives,” she says.
The dream of providing cutting-edge treatment for children in a spectacular, comfortable, family-focused setting is becoming a reality through this partnership between the UA College of Medicine Steele Children’s Research Center and UMC.
Diamond Children’s, announced in November 2007, is helping to attract the best and the brightest physicians, nurses, researchers, and students, says Andreas A. Theodorou, UMC chief medical officer and chief of pediatric critical-care medicine.
“The children of southern Arizona will benefit from having more experts in town, so they don’t have to leave Tucson,” Theodorou says.
“This is the classic ‘build it and they will come,’” he says of the project, which was a decade in the making. “Our patients will have easy access to the latest, greatest treatment and technology.”
Donald and Joan Diamond gift
The children’s hospital, at the north end of UMC, is possible due to a $15 million donation from Donald ’51 and Joan Brown Diamond ’51 and their family. The UMC Foundation is working to raise $60 million in donations to fund the building.
Diamond Children’s, part of a $184 million UMC expansion project, also is funded through bonds. The earliest phase, the Diamond Children’s Emergency Care Center, opened in June 2009.
In addition, the UA Steele Children’s Research Center, responsible for recruitment of physician faculty and research infrastructure, estimates its philanthropic needs at $20 million to fully establish research and clinical endowments in order to recruit the best and brightest specialty pediatricians and scientists.
Don Diamond, a longtime Tucson developer, met Joan Brown while the two were UA students. They married and had three daughters. They were inspired to make the gift after losing their 14-year-old daughter, Deanne, to asthma in 1971. Deanne died in Tucson after asthma medication damaged her heart.
“There was really no place to turn as far as specialized care for asthmatics,” Joan Diamond says of the tragic experience.
“After speaking to other friends who lost children because of similar situations with a different disease, I felt one of the most beneficial things we could do for Tucson is to have a children’s hospital,” she adds.
Says Don Diamond, “We decided to make the major gift towards a children’s hospital because we felt that was number one in the community for the needs right now.”
Helaine Levy, the Diamonds’ daughter and the executive director of the Diamond Family Philanthropies, says the family is thrilled with Diamond Children’s.
“It’s much more of a healing environment for the whole family,” she says. “And what’s really cool is to see the excitement of everyone who works there. They know the difference it’s going to make.”
UMC opened as the UA’s academic hospital in 1971, and was then called University Hospital. The UA spun it off into a separate corporation in the 1980s and it became University Medical Center.
A family-centered environment — what’s in store for Diamond Children’s Medical Center
At UMC, physicians, nurses, staff, equipment, and families are jammed into tight spaces that can undermine the healing process. In contrast, Diamond Children’s is about four times larger.
Construction of the Diamond Children’s lobby, meditation room, aquarium, inspiration garden, outdoor activity area, entertainment area, Route 66 Café, library, and dinosaur exhibit — is expected to be complete in September 2010.
Yvette Ramos understands how important it is to have a family-centered children’s hospital. Her 9-year-old daughter, Larisela, who has asthma, was rushed to UMC by ambulance in October 2009, struggling to breathe.
Yvette and her husband, Jesus, stayed with Larisela every minute in the pediatric intensive care unit as doctors worked to control her asthma. They stayed by her side when she improved enough to move to a regular hospital room.
At night, the couple shared a cramped, uncomfortable single bed that folded out from a narrow chair.
“If one of us had to roll over, we had to roll over together,” Yvette says.
And it meant leaving their younger son, Jesus, 6, with relatives.
“It would really help if we were able to have him with us,” Yvette Ramos says, as she sits near her daughter’s hospital bed.
The new rooms at Diamond Children’s are all private, and will be more family friendly. Each will have a full bathroom and shower that families can use, as well as a double-sized pull-out bed.
“It’s about keeping families together,” says Lori Throne, director of nursing for women and children’s services at UMC.
White walls with art featuring purple dinosaurs and cartoon characters will be replaced by rich, soothing colors, woods, and photography that capture Arizona at its most beautiful, Throne says.
Instead of narrow hallways jammed with equipment, the new hospital has wider passages and provides a more peaceful setting.
Throne says highly experienced nurses were involved in the process of designing the hospital.
“We got an early tour, and I’ve never seen such a mature group of women jumping up and down and cheering,” she says of their response to the new facility.
Children and parents also provided valuable input as to what changes were needed.
Throne shared the example of families with the sickest, tiniest babies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). At UMC, all babies and families are crowded into three large rooms, with virtually no privacy.
“While they wanted more privacy in the NICU, they didn’t want to be isolated,” Throne says. NICU rooms will now accommodate up to four babies.
“We already have the nursing expertise and we have fabulous physicians,” Throne says. “It is all about having a space that is completely designed for families. Every single thing we did, we asked ourselves, how will a child feel? Will a parent feel welcome here? Because it becomes like their second home.”
Small details — like reading lights for parents in the rooms — make a difference, Throne says. “As a nurse, you do not sign up to take care of one single person. You sign up to take care of a family. This facility will help us take care of the whole family”
Attracting physicians and researchers from around the world
Dr. Fayez K. Ghishan, head of the UA Department of Pediatrics and director of the Steele Children’s Research Center, calls a children’s hospital “the soul of an institution.”
“If you have a children’s hospital associated with an academic institution, your ability to attract residents, Ph.D.s, and faculty members is great,” Ghishan says.
“It’s the people who breathe life into a building that make it something special. Our dedicated pediatrics physicians, nurses, specialists, and staff will be the heart of Diamond Children’s.”
The combination of clinical care and research in a top-notch facility will benefit children in Arizona, he says. And the research will help children throughout the world.
“Since I arrived here 14 years ago, I had this dream of building a children’s hospital, and this is now coming true — coming true for the children of Arizona,” he says.
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