Philip Sunshine, a physician at Stanford University, who played an important role in the establishment of neonatal as a medical specialty, a revolution in the care of premature and critically ill newborns who had previously had little chance of survival, died at the April 5th home.
His death was confirmed by Diana Sunshine’s daughter.
Before Dr. Sunshine and a handful of other doctors began to care about taking care of the champions in the late 1950s and early 1960s, more than half of these unthinkable fragile patients died shortly after birth. Insurance companies will not pay for their treatment.
Dr. Sunshine, a pediatric gastroenterologist, believed that many premature babies could be saved. In Stanford, he pushed for groups of doctors from multiple branches to treat them in special intensive care units. Together with his colleagues, he pioneered the methods of supplying the formula and helping breathing with the fans.
“We were able to keep the babies that would not survive live,” Dr. Sunshine said in 2000 in an interview with oral history at the Center for Pediatric History of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “And now everyone is taking this for granted.”
The early 1960s were a turning point in the care of premature babies.
According to Oxford’s English Dictionary, the word neonatal was first used in the 1960 book “Newborn Diseases” by Alexander J. Schaffer, pediatrician in Baltimore. Until that time, Stanford’s neonatization section – one of the first in the country – was ready.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, was born almost six weeks prematurely. Died 39 hours later. The crisis unfolded in the first pages of newspapers across the country, putting pressure on federal health authorities to start having money for neonatal research.
“Kennedy’s story was a big turning point,” Dr. Sunshine told Aha News, a publication by the US Hospital in 1998.
As Head of Stanford’s Neonatalization Department from 1967 to 1989, Dr. Sunshine helped to train hundreds, perhaps even thousands of doctors who continued to work in intensive neonatal units around the world. When he left in 2022, at the age of 92, the survival rate for babies born at 28 weeks was over 90 %.
“Phil is one of the” original “in neonatology, neonatal neonatologist, one of the best in our story,” David K. Stevenson, Dr.
Dr. Sunshine acknowledged that the care of the preachers required both technical know -how and human connection. He called on hospitals to allow parents to visit intensive neonatal units so that they could keep their children, feeling that contact with the skin between mothers and babies was beneficial.
He also gave nurses more autonomy and encouraged them to talk when they thought that the doctors were wrong.
“Our nurses have always been very important carers,” Dr. Sunshine said in oral history. “Throughout my career, I have worked with a nursing staff who would often recognize baby problems before the doctors will do it and do it now.
Cecele Quaintance, a newborns nurse who has worked with Dr. Sunshine for more than 50 years, said in a post on the Stanford Medicine children’s health blog that “there is this deep kindness in Phil – for babies to everyone”.
“Everyone has the same level of importance for him,” he said, adding: “I have watched the families cry when he left the service because they were so connected to him.”
The hours were great. The pressure was excellent.
“It was a relaxing, reassuring presence and completely indifferent,” Dr. Stevenson said in an interview. “He would say,” If you are going to spend all night in the hospital working in your tail, what better way to do this rather than give to someone 80, 90 years of life? ”
Philip Sunshine was born on June 16, 1930 in Denver. His parents, Samuel and Mollie (Fox) Sunshine, held a pharmacy.
He won his degree from the University of Colorado in 1952 and then stayed there for a medical school, graduated in 1955.
After his first year of stay in Stanford, he was trained in the US Navy and served as a lieutenant. When he returned to Stanford in 1959, he was trained under Louis Gluck, a pediatrician who later developed the modern neonatal intensive care unit at Yale University.
“He returned to the care of newborn and made everything heard so interesting,” Dr. Sunshine said.
There were no newborn scholarships at the time, so Dr. Sunshine followed advanced education in pediatric gastroenterology and a scholarship to pediatric metabolism.
“This was a very exciting moment,” Stanford Medicine’s blog told the child’s health. “People with various backgrounds brought their skills to newborn care: pulmonologists, cardiologists, people like me who are interested in the problems of newborn GI.
Dr. Sunshine married Sara Elizabeth Vreland, known as Beth, in 1962.
Together with his wife and daughter Diana, he survives four other children, Rebecca, Samuel, Michael and Stephanie. and nine grandchildren.
In many ways, the surname of Dr. Sunshine was a fool – a word ideally suitable for its possession and way of being.
“Absolutely separate from being the father – or grandfather – of the neonatal, he really brought the sunshine to every room,” Susan R. Hintz, a neonatologist at Stanford, said in an interview. “It was a soothing presence, especially in these very stressful moments. Nurses would tell me all the time,” he remembers everyone.
