Dr. Philip Sunshine, one of the pioneers of neonatology and a big damn hero.
Before Dr. Sunshine and a handful of other physicians became interested in caring for preemies in the late 1950s and early ’60s, more than half of these unimaginably fragile patients died shortly after birth. Insurance companies wouldn’t pay to treat them.
Dr. Sunshine, a pediatric gastroenterologist, thought that many premature babies could be saved. At Stanford, he pushed for teams of doctors from multiple disciplines to treat them in special intensive care units. Along with his colleagues, he pioneered methods of feeding preemies with formula and aiding their breathing with ventilators.
“We were able to keep babies alive that would not have survived,” Dr. Sunshine said in 2000 in an oral history interview with the Pediatric History Center of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “And now everybody just sort of takes this for granted.”
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As chief of Stanford’s neonatology department from 1967 to 1989, Dr. Sunshine helped train hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of doctors who went on to work in neonatal intensive care units around the world. When he retired in 2022, at age 92, the survival rate for babies born at 28 weeks was over 90 percent.
“Phil is one of the ‘originals’ in neonatology, a neonatologist’s neonatologist, one of our history’s best,” David K. Stevenson, Dr. Sunshine’s successor as head of Stanford’s neonatal department, wrote in the Journal of Perinatology in 2011. “He stands comfortably among the great leaders in neonatology and is more than simply a pioneer. He is one of the creators of our discipline.”
Dr. Sunshine recognized that caring for preemies required both technical expertise and human connection. He urged hospitals to allow parents to visit neonatal intensive care units so they could hold their children, sensing that skin-to-skin contact between mothers and babies was beneficial.
He also gave nurses more autonomy and encouraged them to speak up when they thought doctors were wrong.
“Our nurses have always been very important caretakers,” Dr. Sunshine said in the oral history. “All through my career, I’ve worked with a nursing staff that often would recognize problems in the baby before the physicians would, and they still do that now. Well, we were learning neonatology together.”
Crew resource management: it isn’t just for airplanes.
For the historical record: NYT obits for Lulu Roman (previously):
and Cora Sue Collins (previously).
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She reported Mr. Ruskin’s behavior to Louis B. Mayer, the powerful chief of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, where she was a contract player at the time. But, as she recalled, he said, “You’ll get used to it, sweetie.” Soon after, he threatened to keep her from ever working in movies again.
“Mr. Mayer, that’s my heartfelt desire,” she said she told him, adding, “It was the best decision of my life.”
A great big well done to Mr. Sunshine. A man can live a long life and not accomplish as great of things as he did.
And also, A hearty thank you to Lulu Roman, A large woman with a bigger heart and one of the most beautiful voices ever on the extremely popular tv staple, Hee Haw.
We always watched it, and I remember learning back then that you should never, ever judge a book by it’s cover. I think she might have been the best and prettiest female singer that show ever had. I send my most heartfelt RIP to all 3 of these people you have highlighted here. They made the world just a tiny bit brighter for having lived on it, and by reason of their character.