BCHHC

Dee Kalin loves to take a daily walk, spend time with family and volunteer at the hospital.

While she knows many of the staff who work at the hospital, she recently had the opportunity to meet a few more. Kalin recently spent a night in the hospital where she was diagnosed with a blood infection and was prescribed intravenous antibiotic treatment at the BCH Infusion Center.

“I knew we had one - an Infusion Center - because I had to escort someone down there one time, but I didn’t really know what they did,” Kalin said. “I didn’t know what an infusion was. Now I do.”

Kalin underwent infusion treatment every morning for 14 days, and quickly became friends with the entire Infusion Center team of registered nurses - Angie Roschewski, Colleen Nieveen, Kylie Wiens, Linsey Freitag, Megan Dewey, and Supervisor Jeff Terry.

“I loved them,” she said. “They were all so wonderful.

The infusion treatment Kalin received required an Intravenous (IV) Pump. When the Beatrice Community Hospital Foundation learned the Infusion Center was seeing a growing number of patients and could use additional pumps to provide more efficient care, Foundation Executive Director Shelby Watson said she knew this should be the focus of the hospital’s next Big Give Gage fundraising project.

“The services provided by the BCH Infusion Center allow people to be closer to home and feel more at ease when receiving their treatment,” Watson said. “New IV Pumps allow for our staff to efficiently continue providing these services, and the integrated technology of the pumps allows for seamless communication between departments.”

The Foundation has set a goal of raising $20,000 to buy four pumps to ensure BCH patients, like Kalin, get the care they need when they need it.

“We’ve gotten busier, and we need more pumps,” Terry said. “We want to be able to care for local patients locally. Our hospital’s ability to care for patients is growing and infusion is a part of that. We don’t want local patients to have to travel somewhere else for care.”

Terry said the BCH Infusion Center is a unique care center because the treatment patients receive can be lengthy, covering weeks, months and even years. “Our nurses are incredibly skilled and compassionate,” Terry said. “We get to know our patients like family.”

Kalin says she is grateful for the care she received at BCH and appreciated that she could get her infusions close to home without lengthy travel time. But mostly, she appreciates how compassionate and caring everyone was.

“I noticed not just how caring they were to me, but that they were good with everyone who walked in the door,” she said. “I highly recommend them.”