Sarasota Memorial Healthcare Foundation Awards Over $4 Million in Grants to Support Nursing and Enhance Care

The Sarasota Memorial Healthcare Foundation recently awarded four grants totaling more than $4 million to support high-quality health care throughout our community.

Resiliency Program for Nurses:

$21,000 was granted to the USF Foundation and USF College of Nursing for partial funding of a collaborative nursing program with Sarasota Memorial called “Excellence in Nursing During COVID and Beyond.”

The program will provide Sarasota Memorial nurses and USF nursing students with mentoring and preceptorships designed to improve their health and wellness and promote resiliency. It will include small group coaching and supportive resources for staff nurses and students to help them meet the challenges of the job and encourage them to remain in the profession. The initiative also includes an ongoing preceptorship program for newly licensed nurses who plan to work at either SMH – Sarasota or SMH – Venice to help them transition from the academic world to professional practice.

SMH and USF plan to develop and pilot the new program in the coming months, make refinements and roll it out for nurses across the health system beginning this fall.

The other recent Healthcare Foundation grants include:

• $3,910,000 was granted to add six new inpatient rehabilitation rooms at SMH-Sarasota. The grant will help fund construction, information technology and furnishings. The expansion will allow more patients recovering from an illness or injury to receive medical, rehabilitation and mobility care in the state-of-the-art pavilion. The new beds, scheduled to open this October, will be located on 5 South in the hospital, between the E and F elevators.

• $120,032 was provided to help purchase two Sonosite PX Ultrasound systems for the Emergency Care Center at SMH-Sarasota. The new point-of-care visualization tools will enhance patient care by providing advanced image clarity when treating and diagnosing patients.

• $44,000 was awarded to Good Samaritan Pharmacy & Health Services to fund prescription medications for indigent patients supplied by the all-volunteer community pharmacy for a two-year period.

“The ability to award grants to help provide state-of-the-art medical facilities, technology, enhanced patient care and clinical staff wellness programs speaks to our mission at the Healthcare Foundation,” said Mason Ayres, president of the Healthcare Foundation. “We are grateful to our supporters who are helping strengthen healthcare for our community.”