At Ein Kerem, the Hematology Day Care Unit handles 2,500 admissions (visits) a year. It operates 5 days a week, Sunday through Thursday, from 8:00 am - 4:00 pm. It is staffed by 2 physician. The senior clinican, Dr. Ada Goldfarb, has 2 decades of experience treating Hematology-Oncology patients.
The Day Care Unit has the facilities to provide a wide range of treatment for hematology patients. This includes some of the more simple, yet vital tasks, such as checking a patient's blood count after receiving a round of chemotherapy to complex functions such as administering multidrug chemotherapeutic protocols, or extended infusions of agents such as monoclonal antibodies. As our Day Care Unit is operational for the entire work week, we can provide continuity of treatment and follow-up for patients in the period immediately following discharge from hospital.
Two days a week the Day Care Unit concentrates on the care of patients with thalassemia, a hereditary anemia which, in severe cases, causes lifelong transfusion dependence. We make a conscious effort to treat these young, chronically ill patients on the same days each week (Wednesday and Thursday). This allous us to focus on their specific issues which differ greatly from our hematology-oncology patients.
The nursing staff of the Day Care has its own team of professional, experienced, and dedicated nurses. Like those of the Inpatient Unit, the Day Care Unit nurses have many years of general nursing experience followed by an intensive course in hematological-oncological nursing. They are experts in treating chemotherapy patients, administering blood products, and all other aspects of the complicated care our patients require.
The Day Care Unit's head nurse is Mrs. Gita Dror, who recently assumed this position after many years in the Respiratory Intensive Care Unit.
The Day Care Unit is a unique place, able to provide more patient services than the clinic. In fact, a visit to the Day Care Unit can prevent hospital admission or a visit to the Emergency Room. This is one of our busiest facilities and it is currently undergoing a much-needed renovation and expansion. In the near future it will be moved to 2nd floor of the Sharett Institute.
All of the ancillary services - medical specialty consultations, social workers, psychological counseling, dietician etc, are available to patients under the care of the Day Care Unit. These services are also available to inpatients.
Activities
There are morning and afternoon rounds with a senior physician and resident(s) every day. There are Grand Rounds twice a week, Monday morning (3 hours) and Thursday afternoon (2 1/2 hours). On Mondays, every patient is visited by a physician and their condition is discussed. It is our policy that each new, difficult case is presented to the entire staff, and all the major decisions regarding treatment are made during the staff meetings.
The staff meetings are attended by all physicians and residents, the nursing staff, the psychologist and social worker and medical students. During these meetings, various consultants may also be called upon to participate. On Thursdays, specific problems or therapeutic dilemmas are discussed in detail. The staff meetings on Thursdays are also a forum for reporting new information from international conferences, discussing recent pertinent information from newly-published medical literature and updating certain specific subjects which relate to particular patients.
The medical staff usually attends the medical Grand Rounds in the hospital every Wednesday, and rounds of the Division of Internal Medicine every Tuesday. Additionally, the medical staff enjoys topical lectures given by local and foreign guest speakers. The department prepares an annual hour-long comprehensive presentation on a specific topic in Hematology for the forum of the Hospital's Clinical Conference on Wednesday. In addition, the department also prepares 3-4 presentations a year in the Forum of the Medical Grand Rounds which are held on Tuesday afternoons.
Our patients often require a number of ancillary medical consultative services, and we are to happy to provide them. We have very strong partnerships with a number of medical subspecialties, such as infection control/microbiology, imaging, pathology, cytogenetics, social medicine/epidemiology, bone marrow transplantation and blood banking. These partnerships assist us in providing the best care for our patients.