What's Happening

May 12, 2020, Henderson, Nevada – The signs in front of all three campuses of Dignity Health-St. Rose Dominican Hospitals in Henderson and Las Vegas, Nevada, say it all: “Heroes work here.” The signs pay tribute to the staff members of the three campuses, who, like health care workers throughout the world, are risking their own lives to heal patients with COVID-19. The hospital buildings are also lit in blue to recognize the efforts of their partners, the first responders who bring patients to the hospitals.

As of May 8, 2020, Clark County, Nevada – which includes Henderson and Las Vegas – reported 4,616 cases of COVID-19 and 253 deaths, according to the Southern Nevada Health District. Patients with the virus are treated at the Siena and San Martín campuses of St. Rose Dominican Hospitals. The original facility, St. Rose de Lima Campus, has only 10 beds and has not treated patients with the virus.

“We’re hoping we’ve peaked,” said Sister Phyllis Sikora, OP, Vice President of Mission and Spiritual Care for the Nevada Service Area of Dignity Health. Recently returned to her office at the Rose de Lima Campus after seven weeks of working from home, she said her greatest challenge was not being with the staff during the worst of the COVID-19 crisis. “They were faced with it day in and day out,” she said.

The dedication of the staff inspired Sister Phyllis to write weekly emails to them, thanking them and acknowledging the unusual times they faced. “I spoke about their courage to keep coming back every single day,” she said. “The hardest part for me was not to be here at the hospital” to share the challenge.

In her emails, Sister Phyllis also reminded the staff of another particularly challenging time: the mass shooting in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017, when 58 people were killed and 413 wounded. The panic brought the number of wounded to more than 800. The three campuses of St. Rose Dominican Hospitals treated 79 patients, while the chaplains reached out to patients, family members, and staff who were traumatized by the shooting. “I tried to draw upon what got us through October 1, and that we did it and were able to support each other,” Sister Phyllis said. “This is another opportunity for us to do that.”

Religious faith has played a key role in helping staff, patients, and families through the pandemic. “A lot of staff members have said what a difference it makes to work in a faith-based hospital,” Sister Phyllis said. They are able to talk about their faith and the ways in which it helps them to deal with the crisis. The hospitals have incorporated formal prayer: each day at 7:00 p.m., staff members are encouraged to light a candle and pray for all who are impacted by COVID-19, she said.

Sister Phyllis noted other creative ways in which the Spiritual Care Department reached out to patients and their families. “We had to find ways in which we could make that connection” without going into the room of a patient with COVID-19, she said. Priests celebrated Anointing of the Sick through the intercom at the nurse’s station so that the family, patient, and the rest of the staff could hear. Sister Phyllis also cited the case of a woman who celebrated her 91st birthday in the Siena Campus hospital; staff members purchased a cake, brought it to her, and sent a picture of the celebration to her family.

Sister Phyllis said the staff members at the Siena and San Martín campuses also learned to celebrate their victories: the recovery of COVID-19 patients and their discharges from the hospital. After Easter, she said, St. Rose Dominican initiated its Code Hope program, in which a patient about to be discharged chooses a victory theme such as Amazing Grace or the theme from the movie Rocky. That music is played over the loudspeaker as staff members line the corridors, cheering on the patient who is wheeled out of the hospital to continue recovery at home. “On TV every night you see how many new cases we have,” Sister Phyllis said. “It’s important also to know that people recover from [the virus] and to celebrate that.”

While St. Rose Dominican employees support one another, their patients, and the patients’ families, they are also on the receiving end of support: from members of the larger Henderson and Las Vegas community.  

“There probably isn’t a day that goes by when somebody in our community doesn’t bring in breakfast or lunch for our employees,” often including non-medical staff, such as Environmental Services workers who keep the hospital clean, Sister Phyllis said. Community members also sew and donate cloth masks that can be worn by non-medical staff and by medical staff members when they aren’t working directly with a coronavirus patient.

Watch a video of employees of the Las Vegas office of Whiting-Turner Contracting Company bringing 100 box lunches to employees at the St. Rose de Lima Campus of Dignity Health-St. Rose Dominican Hospitals.

Sister Phyllis said that St. Rose Dominican Hospitals and the Las Vegas area in general have been blessed. “One of the reasons I was able to come back [to work in the hospital] was that our numbers of cases have dropped drastically.”

Yet, Sister Phyllis acknowledges that a resurgence of COVID-19 cases is possible once the Las Vegas Strip is reopened, and that the future is uncertain: how the “new normal” will look and how the hospitals will be able to celebrate postponed events such as Nurse’s Week in May and the hospital’s popular fundraising gala. The words of the prayer recited every evening by St. Rose Dominican Hospitals employees could inspire them no matter what future they face:

“As we make the healing presence of God known in our world, we ask for a peace that surpasses all understanding. We also ask for the fortitude needed for the road ahead, knowing that we are walking through this journey together.”

Feature photo at top: A sign in front of the Siena Campus of St. Rose Dominican Hospitals pays tribute to hospital employees during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar signs were placed in front of all three campuses of St. Rose Dominican Hospital.

May 7, 2020, Adrian, Michigan – Sister Sharon Spanbauer, OP, a nurse practitioner who served retired Sisters at the Adrian Dominican Congregation’s Dominican Life center (DLC) from 2001 to 2014, has been appointed Mission Prioress to work with the Sisters in the Holy Rosary Mission Chapter. Sister Patricia Siemen, OP, Prioress of the Congregation, made the announcement May 4, 2020.

Sister Sharon will begin a four-year term on July 1, 2020, and will share collaborative leadership with Sister Patricia Dulka, OP, Chapter Prioress of Holy Rosary Mission Chapter. She succeeds Sister Joanne Peters, OP, who on June 30, 2020, completes her three-year term as Co-Chapter Prioress. The Holy Rosary Mission Chapter is comprised of retired Sisters residing at the DLC.

The Mission Prioress works as an equal with the Chapter Prioress as canonical major superiors to the Sisters in their Chapter. Only in the areas of formation and exclaustration – release from religious life – do Chapter Prioresses have full responsibility. 

“I’m looking forward to getting to know the Chapter members as individuals and to accompany them and facilitate their life in ministry,” Sister Sharon said. “I hope that together we might find a way to best follow the Vision of the Congregation and to live the best of life as Adrian Dominican Sisters individually and communally.”

Sister Sharon hopes to bring to her new ministry her background in health care – which can help her to advocate for the Sisters’ medical care – as well as her teaching and listening skills, her care and compassion, and a leadership style in which she “works with others and can help organize and facilitate their goals.”

A native of Rockford, Illinois, Sister Sharon graduated from Bishop Muldoon High School and entered the Adrian Dominican Congregation in September 1967. She loved her early years as a teacher but yearned for a one-on-one ministry. In 1989, she left her ministry as a chemistry teacher at Bishop Foley High School in Madison Heights, Michigan, to earn her Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) from Wayne State University in Detroit. 

After earning a Nurse Practitioner degree from Michigan State University, Sister Sharon ministered at Dillon Family Medicine, a large clinic in Dillon, South Carolina, sponsored by the Franciscan Sisters of Mercy. She went on to become the first nurse practitioner to serve at the Dominican Life Center and, beginning in 2015, ministered as the Director of Health Services at Siena Heights University, sponsored by the Adrian Dominican Sisters. She ran a free, one-woman clinic for students, faculty, and staff members.

Her appointment as Mission Prioress brings her back to the DLC, to the retired Sisters and the Co-workers she has come to love. “I’m very delighted,” she said. “I loved my time at the Dominican Life Center and my ministry there, and I deeply respect all of our Co-workers and what they do to make life comfortable and productive for our Sisters. I’m really joyfully looking forward to this new ministry.”