By Sheldon Spackman

Fundraiser supporting fetal heart monitors in Rocky Mountain House

Nov 28, 2018 | 2:55 PM

A holiday donation campaign is underway in Rocky Mountain House to help raise funds to purchase three new fetal heart monitors for the community’s health centre.

The campaign is being led by the Rocky Mountain House Health Foundation and aims to have them in place later this year or early in the New Year.

Rocky Mountain House RN Aggie Cowan says there are multiple reasons for needing the new fetal heart monitors.

“The ones we have are past being able to service,” she explains. “They have a certain life expectancy and they’re past their life expectancy and no longer supported in terms of fixing anything that goes wrong. The other is provincially, we’re going to a new computer charting system called Connect Care and the old Spacelabs is what the name of those machines were, are not compatible with Connect Care.”

Cowan says fetal heart monitors are used in circumstances like when a pregnant woman is in labour.

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“They monitor the baby’s heart rate and they monitor contraction patterns and then compare the two to just be sure that the baby is responding in a healthy manner to the contractions,” she explains. “These machines that we’ll be getting, they can be moving around because they have remote telemetry capability. They can be in a bathtub or in a shower because they will be waterproof and really improve the possibility of a good outcome and normal delivery.”

Dr. Kim Rogers is a family physician in Rocky Mountain House and points-out the fetal heart monitors may not be necessary for all laboring women but when they do need them, they are essential in finding out if the baby is O.K.

“Then we can make decisions on how best to manage a mother in labour and to keep the baby healthy,” adds Rogers.

Shirley Hope, site manager for the Rocky Mountain House Health Centre, says they have about 150 births per year at their facility and a requirement in supporting those births is having fetal heart monitoring equipment.

“What we had was donated by the community about 12 years ago but it needs to be replaced because it’s no longer current in technology,” she explains. “The Foundation has generously offered to support this purchase and they are now raising funds for that. The total for the three monitors, including two Wi-Fi sets is $75,000.”

To help the Rocky Mountain House Health Foundation reach their fundraising goal, residents can contact the RMH Health Centre or Foundation directly.

Donations can also be made online at rmhhealthfoundation.com.

You can also email rmhhealthservicesfoundation@gmail.com.