Philip Sunshine, a doctor at the University of Stanford who played an important role in creating neonatology as a medical specialty, revolutionizing the care of premature newborns and seriously sick who had previously been unleaded, died on April 5 at his home in Cupertino, California. He was 94 years old.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Diana Sunshine.
Before Dr. Sunshine and a handful of other doctors were interested in taking care of prematurestations in the late 1950s and early 1960s, more than half of these unimaginable patients died shortly after birth. Insurance companies would not pay to treat them.
Dr. Sunshine, a pediatric gastroenterologist, thought that many premature babies could be saved. In Stanford, he pressure for teams of doctors from several disciplines to treat them in special intensive care units. In parallel with his colleagues, he launched methods to feed the prematureates with the formula and help their breathing with the fans.
“We were able to keep babies alive that would not have survived,” said Dr. Sunshine in 2000 in an oral history interview With the Pediatric History Center of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “And now everyone takes some sort of it for granted.”
The early 1960s was a turning point in the care of premature babies.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word neonatology was used for the first time in the 1960 book “Diseases of Newborn” by Alexander J. Schaffer, pediatrician in Baltimore. At that time, the Stanford neonatology department – one of the first in the country – was operational.
In 1963, the second son of President John F. Kennedy, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, was born almost six premature weeks. He died 39 hours later. The crisis took place on the first pages of the newspapers across the country, putting pressure on the federal health authorities to start allocating money in neonatal research.
“The story of Kennedy was a big turning point,” said Dr. Sunshine to Aha News, a publication by the American Hospital Association, in 1998. “After that, the money in federal research for neonatal care has become much easier to obtain.”
As head of the Stanford neonatology department from 1967 to 1989, Dr. Sunshine helped train hundreds, perhaps even thousands of doctors who have continued to work in neonatal intensive care units from around the world. When he retired in 2022, at 92, the survival rate of babies born at 28 weeks was more than 90%.
“Phil is one of the” originals “in neonatology, neonatologist of a neonatologist, one of the best in our history,” wrote David K. Stevenson, Dr. Sunshine in 2011. He is comfortably among the great leaders of neonatology.
Dr. Sunshine recognized that the management of prematures required both technical expertise and human connection. He urged hospitals to allow parents to visit neonatal intensive care units so that they can hold their children, feeling that skin contact with the skin between mothers and babies was beneficial.
He also gave nurses more and encouraged them to speak when they thought the doctors were wrong.
“Our nurses have always been very important guards,” said Dr. Sunshine in oral history. “Throughout my career, I worked with nursing staff who often recognized problems in the baby before doctors do it, and they always do it now. Well, we learn neonatology together. ”
Cecele Quaintance, a neonatal nurse who worked with Dr Sunshine for more than 50 years, said in a blog For the health of the children of Stanford Medicine, “there is this deep kindness to Phil – for babies, for us, for everyone”.
“Everyone has the same importance for him,” she said, adding: “I watched families cry when he was in service because they were so attached to him.”
The hours were long; The pressure was extraordinary.
“It was a soothing and reassuring and completely imperturbable presence”, ” Dr Stevenson said in an interview. “He said:” If you are going to spend the whole night in the hospital to work on your tail, what better way to do that by giving someone 80, 90 years of life? “”
Philip Sunshine was born on June 16, 1930 in Denver. His parents, Samuel and Mollie (Fox) Sunshine, had a pharmacy.
He obtained his baccalaureate from the University of Colorado in 1952, then stayed there for a medical school, graduated in 1955.
After his first year of residence in Stanford, he was drafted in the American navy and was a lieutenant. Upon his return to Stanford in 1959, he formed under Louis Gluck, a pediatrician who then developed the modern neonatal care unit at the University of Yale.
“He turned to the care of newborns and made all sound so interesting”, Dr. Sunshine said.
There were no neonatological scholarships at the time, so Dr Sunshine followed advanced training in pediatric gastroenterology and a pediatric metabolism scholarship.
“It was a very exciting period”, said In the blog of the children's health blog of Stanford Medicine. “People with various history brought their skills to newborns: pulmonologists, cardiologists, people like me who were interested in the gastrointestinal problems of newborns. I took a lot of information and enthusiasm, and we had many opportunities to change the way babies were treated. ”
Dr. Sunshine married Sara Elizabeth Vreeland, known as Beth, in 1962.
With his wife and daughter Diana, he is survived by four other children, Rebecca, Samuel, Michael and Stephanie; And nine grandchildren.
In many ways, Dr. Sunshine's surname was an aptonym – a word ideally adapted to its occupation and its way of being.
“Totally separated from being the father – or the grandfather – of neonatology, he really brought the sun in each room,” Susan R. Hintz, A neonatologist in Stanford, said in an interview. “It was a soothing presence, especially in these very stressful moments. The nurses told me all the time,” it is the one that everyone remembers. “”
