Newswise — A hospital stay can be an anxious time for children and their families. The Marisa Tufaro Foundation helped make these stays less stressful for children when they recently made a generous donation to the child life program at The Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital (BMSCH) at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH).
The Marisa Tufaro Foundation was founded by Greg Tufaro, a scholastic sports writer for MyCentralJersey.com, the Home News Tribune and the Courier News, and his wife, Cyndi, an Edison school principal, following their daughter Marisa’s passing on Jan. 30
Art therapy provides therapeutic, healing benefits for patients in hospitals. Art therapy can help patients open up and share their thoughts, feelings and perceptions about their hospitalization or illness through the creative process. Opening up through art can alleviate stress, anxiety, emotional distress and potentially minimize pain.
“Expanding our art therapy program adds another dimension to the service we can provide to support our children, especially with patients who have acute psychological needs,” said Barbara Romito, Director of Child Life at BMSCH. “Programs like art therapy offer children ways to express themselves so they can cope with their hospital experience.”
This is the second donation that the Marisa Tufaro Foundation has made to BMSCH this year. In September, the Foundation partnered with the cheer and football teams at Old Bridge and South Brunswick High Schools to collect and donate a significant amount of toys to the pediatric patients of BMSCH.
Marisa was born with a complex cardiac defect that required six open-heart surgeries. Despite keeping hundreds of doctor’s appointments and being hospitalized for more than two years, Marisa lived a vibrant life that inspired. A heart transplant, performed to extend Marisa’s life, tragically cut it short after a post-operative complication developed into a rare form of Stage IV cancer. After radiation and chemotherapy treatments failed to thwart the relentless onslaught of an aggressive disease that riddled her brain and body, Marisa succumbed to her illness in January following a valiant battle. She was 13 years old.
Marisa was under the loving care for her entire life of Joseph Gaffney, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Division Chief, Pediatric Cardiology at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.
To learn more about RWJUH, please visit www.rwjuh.edu. For a referral to a physician affiliated with RWJUH, please call 1-888-MD-RWJUH. Follow us on Twitter at www.rwjuh.edu/twitter and Facebook at www.rwjuh.edu/facebook.
About the Bristol-Myers Squibb Children's Hospital at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital
The Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital (BMSCH) at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH) remains as the focal point of New Brunswick’s growing children’s health campus. As New Jersey’s largest free-standing, state-designated acute care children’s hospital, the state-of-the-art facility is specially designed to care for children. BMSCH has nearly 10,000 inpatient admissions and 22,000 pediatric emergency room visits annually.
From pediatric surgery, urology and cardiology to oncology, hematology and pulmonology, BMSCH’s specialists and intensivists provide advanced care for children of all ages—from fragile newborns to adolescents.
BMSCH consistently ranks among the top-rated children’s hospitals in America for patient satisfaction. In fact, BMSCH’s patient satisfaction scores are in the top 1 percent of all children’s hospitals nationwide.
As an academic hospital, BMSCH is able to draw upon the resources of Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, one of the nation’s leading comprehensive medical schools. To learn more about BMSCH, please visit www.bmsch.org.
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