Written by Pam Fedack/Ron Guenther

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Dr. Don Klassen

Many generous donations have been put to work in a number of ways by the Boundary Trails Health Centre Foundation.

Each year the foundation purchases items, funds a number of positions, programs and initiatives over and above what the hospital gets in annual funding from Manitoba Health.

“As you can imagine, there are many requests by Boundary Trails and all the other hospitals in the province, Manitoba Health has a budget as well and they are unable to fund everything that is requested,” said BTHC Foundation Medical Representative Dr. Don Klassen. “The foundation tries to be there to try to help pick out those things that would be those additional things that we can do to make for patients in the hospital to make them more comfortable.”https://www.youtube.com/embed/xVJ8gydKvHI?rel=0&fs=1&wmode=transparent

Klassen said sometimes the additional equipment they purchase offers basic care, while other times they may provide a new bed, a new mattress, or a new chair that’s a lot better for specific patients than that standard equipment that’s provided to the hospital.

When people come for dialysis three times a week and need to sit in a chair for up to five hours at a time, they need to have a chair that’s comfortable. He said they perhaps need a bigger screen to watch a show on during those dialysis sessions. “Similarly for the folks in the palliative care…certainly the chemo area is another area of our hospital that people are coming sometimes very difficult diagnosis and difficult treatments, and to make them as comfortable as we can, we kind of take pleasure in doing that.”