Jake Froehlich, director of nursing at Atrium, said the devices help connect those who cannot visit their loved ones in the hospital due to current visitor restrictions because of the pandemic.
“This is an amazing donation and we feel very blessed,” Froehlich said. “These devices go such a long way to connect families with patients who are experiencing extreme hardships. Some of them lose their will to live and this helps connect them with their family and gives them something to fight for.”
He said family members come into the hospital, typically meet with a chaplain and are led into a private room when they’re allowed to talk to their loved one on the Facebook Portal. Sometimes, Froehlich said, end of life decisions are made during this conversations.
Geri Lynn Maples, of Middletown, serves as director of the Blue Star Families Dayton chapter that was founded in 2020. Since then, the chapter that serves military families and includes veterans and civilian members, have grown from 500 to 1,400.
She said Facebook Portals were donated to Veterans Affairs medical facilities in Dayton and Cincinnati and she decided to donate 44 to Atrium. Her husband Robert served in the Ohio Army National Guard in Iraq from 2003-2004 and was injured, she said.
She said it was difficult to communicate with him when he was being treated for his injuries, but COVID-19 has created “a completely worse, unimaginable” situation for families whose relatives are hospitalized.
She delivered the portals with Middletown Mayor Nicole Condrey and talked to the hospital’s president, Dr. Keith Bricking and its chaplain, Ed Bastien. They told her about some of the hardships COVID-19 has created for patients and their families.
“That’s when I knew this was the right thing to do,” she said of the donation.
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