FOND DU LAC (NBC 26) — Today, Vincent “Vinny” Goeldi is a happy three-year-old who loves superheroes and playing with his brothers.
But in November, when he was two, Vinny and his family went through every parent’s worst nightmare.
His parents Nick and Caitlin Goeldi said Vinny was acting fine before bed one evening, but then woke them up in the middle of the night with respiratory issues.
The heavy breathing and whistling noises were enough for Vinny’s parents to decide to take him to SSM Health Ripon Community Hospital, which, unbeknownst to them, had recently undergone a pediatric readiness program to prepare for kids just like him.
“We wanted to be prepared because we knew…. at two in the morning patient families aren't going to want to drive to Oshkosh or Fond du Lac for care,” Ashley Kolberg, Ripon Community Hospital’s Nurse Manager and Emergency Management Chair, said.
Vinny was diagnosed with croup and parainfluenza, and was treated in Ripon as they awaited an ambulance to Milwaukee Children’s Hospital.
For many Wisconsin families in less populated communities, access to hospital services can be a challenge. SSM Health Ripon Community Hospital is designated as a rural “critical access hospital.” Kolberg said this means they have less than 25 inpatient acute beds, staff a 24/7 ER and are a certain distance from the next closest hospital.
"Your critical access hospitals are really important to bring those services to the communities where they don't have all of those other specialties," Kolberg said.
In fall of 2022, the hospital began the Wisconsin Pediatric Readiness Program for Community Emergency Departments through Children’s Health Alliance of Wisconsin.
It started with a survey to identify ways the hospital could improve its ability to care for kids in the emergency room.
“It also helped us develop new things that we didn't realize we didn't have or that we needed maybe… So we got a lot of new respiratory equipment, especially with RSV, being ramped up and again, seeing our gaps that we didn't know we had,” Desiree Stensrud, leader of this project and SSM Health Ripon Community Hospital Inpatient Nursing Supervisor, said.
The program also helped the hospital organize pediatric equipment by the child’s weight, allowing them to use the proper equipment to treat kids of different sizes, and this came in handy for little Vinny as well.
“They knew how heavy he was, and they had this really nice, organized binder,” Nick remembers.
For his parents, these improvements put them at ease whe
“We couldn't be more thankful every day… for that I truly I think, you know, it saved his life,” Caitlin said.
The hospital nurses agree that having these measures in place makes a massive difference for kids like Vinny.
“They live right and Ripon, so to come five minutes as opposed to 25 minutes in a situation where he ended up intubated, that 20 minutes could have been the difference of his outcome for sure,” Stensrud said.
VInny made a full recovery, and is now back to his playful self.
“We’re just. . . so grateful,” Caitlin said.
