Nationwide Children’s Hospital has been the Memorial Tournament’s primary beneficiary since its inception in 1976. The Tournament has raised more than $5.7 million to support the programs and services at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in those 30-plus years. In 2005 the Memorial made a pledge that will elevate its level of giving to more than $11 million in the coming years.
In honor of the Memorial’s support, Nationwide Columbus Children’s Hospital hosted a ceremony on May 26, 2006, dedicating its Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) as the Memorial Tournament NICU. The Memorial Tournament NICU provides a family-centered atmosphere for the finest possible medical care for the smallest and sickest babies.
The Memorial Tournament NICU provides a family-centered atmosphere for the finest possible medical care for the smallest and sickest babies. It contains twenty eight rooms, fourteen of which are private for babies in need of the most acute care. Each room is designed with an enhanced family-centered care environment that allows parents to stay overnight at their baby’s bedside. In addition, the rooms feature natural light, better sound and light control, increased privacy for families, and superior delivery of the highest quality of neonatal care by interdisciplinary teams. There are three rooms that enable parents of twins to stay in one room with both babies, and two rooms that provide the same comfort for parents of triplets or quadruplets. Every detail in the units, from private bathrooms to paint colors and light fixtures to star-and-moon-shaped cabinet knobs, were created to help patients and their family members feel as welcome and at home as possible during what can be very stressful times.
In addition to physical comforts, parents may put their minds at ease armed with the knowledge that Child Magazine named Nationwide Children’s Hospital to the top-10 within five categories on their annual national rankings -- No. 1 for Pediatric Emergency Care; No.4 for Pulmonary Medicine; No. 5 for Neonatology; No. 6 for Orthopedics; and No. 10 for Hematology/Oncology (cancer programs).
With the rate of preterm births growing by more than thirty percent in the past twenty years, the need for the Memorial Tournament NICU and the nation’s largest neonatal network at Nationwide Children’s Hospital is greater than ever. Case in point… the Memorial Tournament NICU was full the day it opened.