The Dominican Hospital 411

Before our behind the scenes tour of Dominican Hospital. Did you ever wonder who comes to scoop you up after a heart attack, or a slip in the tub? Those awesome Dominican hospital folks. Greys' Anatomy has got nothin' on our local health professional health care staff ala rock stars.

The same ones who offer great community services and wellness programs that rival any spa or retreat. Gee, lucky us. Really we all got an earful of medicine, or was it a spoonful of sugar to make the details of administration duties at a hospital go down a bit more smoothly. Whatever IT was, I think I can speak for the class: the experience was nothing short of eye-opening and informatively amazing.
Germs, ICU, wash your hands with foamy anti -germmy, repeat over and over until you play with the Cyber-surgery arm that cost a million bucks. Those Italians make amazing coffee AND our robot friend Michelangelo. (See sidebar for video short.)

The burning question for me of course: how many of you were a little scared of the robot'o arm that we all got a chance to "drive." Robotic surgery and the scary B-movie quality of the pixelated microscope video vision left me with a few residual bad dreams. You too? Please share below...

But seriously, the staff, technology, and of course proximity to such a world class medical faculty really made me want to eat another piece of fried chicken steak and biscuit covered in gravy- am I right?
It's a short spin to the ICU specialized Heart Unit. So civilized. These are the folks who teach the folks at other leading hospitals.

Sniglet of the day: Ice those cardiac arrest patients...... stat.

Totally LOVED the description of how to save heart attack victims (ice.)

MY idea ?     Keep lots of ice on hand for a fresh batch while in transit to ICU (simply as a safety net) and enjoy many iced beverages as a benefit.

The healthy lunch was a Thai- salad with iced tea and carrot cake and coffee- Thank you Dominican Hospital catering staff. After looking in the vending machines on campus, I thought my only option might be hydrogenated snack food. Did the operations folks miss the healthy memo from up stairs?

The second half of our session was to see the behind the scenes at a handful of local 401c3's.
Thanks to all that allowed us to enjoy a facilities visit: The Grey Bears, Beach Flats Community Center,  Green space on Soquel Avenue and last but certainly NOT least the ever important Second Harvest Food Bank.

Nice job everyone- pitching into the food bank fund was a classy touch from class 26. Bravo.