St. Christopher's Hospital for Children

St. Christopher's Hospital for Children is a 189 bed non-sectarian children’s hospital located in Philadelphia. It is one of the oldest full-service hospitals in the United States totally dedicated to the care of children. St. Christopher’s Hospital has an academic affiliation with Drexel University College of Medicine and the Temple University School of Medicine.

About

On November 30, 1875, founder William H. Bennett, MD, opened St. Christopher’s Hospital as a charitable ambulatory pediatric clinic. Over the years, the hospital added several buildings before outgrowing its quarters and in 1990, the hospital relocated to its present location on Erie Avenue and Front Street. This facility includes an acute care hospital, a medical office building, a teaching and research center and research laboratories.

St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children operates several satellite offices throughout the Greater Philadelphia region and southern New Jersey. These include primary care offices and pediatric specialty care centers in Yardley, Pennsylvania, Northeast Philadelphia, East Falls, Pennsylvania, Reading, Pennsylvania and Washington Twp., Southern New Jersey.

The Pediatric Residency at St. Christopher's is top ranked. Each year St. Christopher's Hospital for Children receives thousands of applications to its Pediatric Residency Program from which 300 are selected to interview. From this group, St. Christopher's selects 24 PL-1 residents through the National Resident Matching Program.

Historic milestones

• 1940: established the nation’s first child life/play therapy program housed in a children’s medical center.
• 1968: the hospital performed its first open heart case.
• 1971: surgeons performed the Delaware Valley’s first pediatric kidney transplant.
• 1987: performed the Delaware Valley’s first combined liver/kidney transplant.
• 1989: became the first hospital in the world to use oxygen-rich liquid ventilation to help premature newborns breathe.
• 1990: became the first hospital in the Delaware Valley to use electrical mapping to locate and remove a brain tumor in a pediatric patient.
• 1993: performed a heart transplant on the Delaware Valley’s youngest patient – a 4-day-old infant.
• 2005: St. Christopher’s Hospital celebrates 130 years of service.
• 2009: the hospital achieved Magnet status from the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

Clinical services and programs

St. Christopher's Hospital for Children offers health care services for children from birth through 21 years of age. Pediatric services include sub-specialties such as cardiology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, nephrology, neurology, pulmonary, oncology, and rheumatology. The hospital also provides pediatric surgical services such as cardiothoracic surgery, general surgery, neurosurgery, orthopaedic surgery, and plastic and reconstructive surgery. The hospital operates a Level I Pediatric Trauma Center, a Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and a pediatric burn center. Other services and programs include minimally invasive surgery, cystic fibrosis center, sickle cell anemia care and research center, AIDS/HIV program, sleep center and fetal evaluation center.

References

External links

• St. Christopher's website
• St. Chris Facebook