Sha'arei Tzedek Medical Center
Encyclopedia
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
.
History
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
Turks gave permission in the 1890s, and with funding from European donors, the hospital was built on Jaffa Road
Jaffa Road
Jaffa Road is one of the longest and oldest streets in Jerusalem. It crosses the city from east to west, from the Old City walls to downtown Jerusalem, the western portal of Jerusalem and the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. It is lined with shops, businesses and restaurants...
, two miles (3 km) outside the Old City. Its opening ceremony took place on January 27, 1902. Dr. Moshe Wallach was the director from then until 1947. Schwester Selma
Schwester Selma
Schwester Selma was a German Jewish nurse who served as head nurse of Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem for 48 years. She was the first trained nurse in Palestine....
lived in the hospital and cared for abandoned children.
The building in Bayit Vegan
Bayit Vegan
Bayit VeGan is a neighborhood in southwest Jerusalem, Israel, with a mostly charedi religious population. Bayit VeGan is located to the east of Mount Herzl and borders the neighborhoods of Kiryat Hayovel and Givat Mordechai. The Shaare Zedek Medical Center is located near Bayit VeGan...
was inaugurated in 1980.
Facilities
Shaare Zedek is located on an 11.5 acres (46,538.9 m²) campus between the neighborhoods of Bayit VeGanBayit Vegan
Bayit VeGan is a neighborhood in southwest Jerusalem, Israel, with a mostly charedi religious population. Bayit VeGan is located to the east of Mount Herzl and borders the neighborhoods of Kiryat Hayovel and Givat Mordechai. The Shaare Zedek Medical Center is located near Bayit VeGan...
in the south and Ramat Beit HaKerem
Ramat Beit HaKerem
Ramat Beit Hakerem is a Jewish neighborhood in west Jerusalem, Israel, established in 1991, on a tall hill, between Beit Hakerem to its north, the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University to its east and Bait VeGan to its south-west. The meaning of its name is Beit Hakerem’s Heights...
in the north, east of Mount Herzl
Mount Herzl
Mount Herzl , also Har HaZikaron , is the national cemetery of Israel on the west side of Jerusalem. It is named for Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism. Herzl's tomb lies at the top of the hill. Yad Vashem, which commemorates the Holocaust, lies to the west of Mt. Herzl....
in southwest Jerusalem. The hospital has 500 beds and treats over 300,000 patients a year in its in-patient and out-patient facilities. As terrorist attacks in Jerusalem reached a peak in 2001-2004, Shaare Zedek treated more victims than any other hospital in Israel. The hospital's trauma unit located within its Weinstock Department of Emergency Medicine on the Fanya Gottesfeld Heller Floor has become a model for emergency medicine and handling large-scale mass casualty incidents. The hospital campus, completed in 1979, consists of ten interconnected buildings with the central structure being a ten-story building which houses the in-patient departments. The bottom three floors are located underground so as to allow the hospital to continue to operate even during war time under the threat of missile strike. The Department of Emergency Medicine, the Wohl Surgical Operating Complex inaugurated in 2010, the Pharmacy and critical supply areas are all located in this underground portion and other areas of the hospital can be evacuated to this portion when necessary.
Shaare Zedek is well known for its extensive decontamination
Decontamination
Decontamination is the process of cleansing the human body to remove contamination by hazardous materials including chemicals, radioactive substances, and infectious material...
facilities capable of responding to terrorist attacks. The hospital acts as the on-call facility for the entire Jerusalem area to respond to chemical warfare
Chemical warfare
Chemical warfare involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as weapons. This type of warfare is distinct from Nuclear warfare and Biological warfare, which together make up NBC, the military acronym for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical...
attacks. Shaare Zedek's decontamination facilities served as an inspiration for New York's largest similar facility at the New York Downtown Hospital
New York Downtown Hospital
New York Downtown Hospital is a not-for-profit, acute care, teaching hospital in New York City and is the only hospital in Lower Manhattan...
.
Administration
Shaare Zedek is a private hospital that relies on fundraising. The director general of the hospital is Prof. Jonathan Halevy. The hospital maintains public relations offices in ten countries, among them EnglandEngland
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. An interesting fact is that a high percentage of the hospital's physicians and other staff are immigrants, especially from English-speaking countries. The fact that the hospital treats a high number of American patients has enabled it to receive USAID funds.
Wohl Surgical Operating Complex
In June 2007, Shaare Zedek began several major construction efforts on its facilities, including the complete renovation of its surgical facilities, now known as the Wohl Surgical Operating Complex. The unit is spread over two floors in the hospital's underground section(in future). Nowadays this unit located in just one (second) floor.Wilf Children's Hospital
Shaare Zedek is forming a separate unit for children, to be called Wilf Children's Hospital, consolidating the different departments involved in pediatric medicine. The unit is spread over two floors of the main hospital. Part of the Wilf Children's Hospital is the Glaubach Department of Pediatric Emergency Medicine. It also includes a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), as well as departments for pediatric neurology, cardiology, urology, nephrology, rheumatology, pulmonology, hematology, gastroenterology, infectious disease, and neonatology. Other units in the hospital which offer consultation and treatment to pediatric patients include ophthalmology, ear nose and throat, psychiatry, orthopedics, and neuropsychology.Wilf Women and Infant Center
A third maternity department was opened in March 2009. Well over 1000 children are born in the hospital each month, on average; this figure is higher than that of all other Jerusalem hospitals combined. The center includes over 100 maternity beds.Jesselson Heart Center
The entire tenth floor of the hospital has been converted to form the Jesselson Heart Center, which combines cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery. In 2008, it was the first hospital in Israel to replace heart valves via cardiac catheterization.Weinstock Family Department of Emergency Medicine
Shaare Zedek's emergency department is the busiest in Jerusalem. It is capable of handling all emergencies, with the exception of neurosurgical ones. The department includes the Kennedy Leigh Trauma & Resuscitation Center. It includes a 14-bed observation and short stay unit, as well as a 5-bed chest pain unit. The new department, opened in the early 2000s, is more than three times larger than the previous one. It served about 60,000 patients in 2006.Orthopedics Department
The department includes separate units for the spine, arthroscopy, hand surgery, joint reconstruction, and foot and ankle care. A total of 14 orthopedic surgeons form the core of the unit, which receives patients from around the country.Special units
The hospital has several specialized units for specific diseases, namely Gaucher's diseaseGaucher's disease
Gaucher's disease is a genetic disease in which a fatty substance accumulates in cells and certain organs.Gaucher's disease is the most common of the lysosomal storage diseases. It is caused by a hereditary deficiency of the enzyme glucosylceramidase. The enzyme acts on the fatty acid...
and cystic fibrosis
Cystic fibrosis
Cystic fibrosis is a recessive genetic disease affecting most critically the lungs, and also the pancreas, liver, and intestine...
.
In September 2008, the hospital treated Georgians wounded in that country's war with Russia.