The race is on to provide patients with new beds at Centenary Hospital in Scarborough.
The Rouge Valley Health System will hold a bed race behind the Scarborough Civic Centre on April 29 to raise funds for new hospital beds.
The Buy a Bed campaign, is celebrating a year of fundraising with this event that will have staff at the hospital competing with corporate teams from around Scarborough.
Campaign director Katherine Craine says new beds are overdue.
“At Centenary here, we haven’t had replacement beds, as a bulk buy, for over 20 years probably,” Craine said. “So a lot of the beds are getting to the point where they’re past their usefulness and some of them are breaking.”
Each new bed costs $5,000 and up, depending on which ward the bed is for.
So far, donations from the staff and community have raised enough money to buy 10 new beds.
Some staff members have money taken directly off their paycheques for the campaign.
They say the main reason for their donations is concern for patient safety.
“Patients who are comfortable recover more quickly,” said Dianna Harrison, manager of the emergency department.
“They lie on stretchers in the emergency department, so when they get up to a bed, I want that bed to be a good quality, safe bed for them,” she said. “Our beds are in decline over the years and there are newer models out there that are more comfortable and safer.”
Janet Roth, a clinical practice leader for the emergency department, says her donations were inspired by her desire to look out for the safety of not only the patients, but the staff as well.
“I would want [the patients] on a bed that they’re comfortable on,” Roth said. “And also from a nursing perspective, you want a bed that’s going to be easy for the nursing staff to care for the patients in.
“If that was my family member, where would I want them?”
Ward 43 councillor Paul Ainslie is chair of the campaign and was the first person to buy a bed for the hospital.
For more information donating and about the bed race, visit buyabed.ca.