- They're right in here.
We're looking for someone who might have won,
the distinguished service award.
- Dr. Fitzgibbon
(people applaud)
- I didn't wanna see you go
at least without really noting,
the kind of service that you've had
at Akron Children's Hospital.
But we're so pleased
to have been able to work with Dr. Fitzgibbon
over the past 40 years.
President of medical staff, longest serving,
probably leader of the credentials committee ever.
- Right, thank you.
- And you did a fabulous job.
- Right, Dr. Agamanolis always told me,
don't stay too long.
- Don't stay too long.
(woman laughs)
But we're so excited and I think that,
one of the reasons that Fitz has stayed so long
in adolescent medicine is truly, he is young at heart.
And I remember wild stories about Cathy Anderson telling me
about how you set up clinics in a parking lot-
- Well, that was Daryl Steiner and I, yeah.
- To just serve kids.
So, anyway, so we're very proud of you doing this.
We know, you've done a wonderful job
at taking care of adolescents.
You really care for them from the bottom of your heart,
not only the ones that you see in our clinic
but in the jail and everywhere.
So really a tribute to you for getting this program started
and carrying it forward for so many years
here at Akron Children's Hospitals.
So, we of course have cookies and a plaque.
Wait, I have to, we're gonna do that,
I have to show this first 'cause I just think...
(woman laughs)
- [Rob] They're Fitzgibbon cookies.
(people laugh)
- Now, these will be a hot item,
whether you want to get them out
or, you know, auction them off.
- For over 40 years, Dr. Fitz has cared for,
Akron Children's adolescent patients,
tirelessly building the foundation
for our adolescent services.
Each day he advocates for adolescents
to get the confidential and nonjudgmental,
care they need to develop into functional adults,
within the community.
He served in this hospital in many capacities
as Grace just said, including medical staff president,
he's been a mentor to medical students and providers
at all levels and is actually,
a recipient of teaching award
that didn't get in there multiple times,
he received the teaching award.
Dr. Fitz has provided medical care,
with Summit County's most vulnerable youth
and helped lead afterschool programming
for life skills to teens.
His compassion for patients and families,
is reflected in the grateful comments of those
for whom he's provided care over the years,
including multiple families who have turned
to him for three generations.
Dr. Fitz will always be remembered for the lives,
he's touched both in and outside the hospital.
Congratulations, Jim...
(people applaud)
- Everything that we've achieved here since,
I took over as director was built upon the bedrock
that Dr. Fitzgibbon, laid down
and I was just honored to be able to,
sort of step in and continue his tremendous work.
- The compliments I hear from anybody, staff-wise
from clinical staff to providers is that,
he follows through and makes sure that everybody has,
a place and things are going in the right direction.
- If there's any body who could be described
as having his heart in the right place, it's Fitz.
He's worked tirelessly to build the department
and has done a great job
of mentoring and teaching and caring
for his patients-
- I'm just going to miss him like crazy.
It's gonna be really weird,
not seeing him on a day-to-day basis.
He's like any other provider I've ever known,
he's so caring, he's so gracious, he's humble,
he's so good to his patients, his families...
His families love him.
- Dr. Fitz is kind of like my work dad.
He's really been a mentor for my professional world
since I've been here in Akron Children's.
He's always a great teacher, he's very understanding
and he kind of shows me the way
on how to take care of these teens in the best way possible.
His patients love him like family, we love him like family
and we'll be really sad to see him go,
here in the next month,
when he retires after 40 years of service.
- They did manage to pull off quite a surprise,
I was a little bit shocked when they walked in.
So I first and foremost want to thank everyone for this,
true honor, followed lots of great folks,
who've received this before.
But I think it's important to remember
that you don't finish these kinds of things,
in a career with a whole bunch,
without a whole bunch of staff to help.
And I want to kind of walk through,
the last several decades.
You'll see some of these slides, just pictures of folks
that I'll be commenting on as we walk through.
I came back here in 1980,
with the help of John Kramer
and Bob Stone,
who helped me get started
in the adolescent programming here.
They encouraged me to come back
and actually came here for my residency
because you guys had an inpatient adolescent unit
and actually hung out there as a resident,
which I'm not sure is common for our residents all the time
but that's kind of where I spent my three years.
I particularly wanna comment on my family,
whose, no less supported me
and occasionally had to re-route me.
And occasionally, as you noticed, I have a haircut,
she wasn't too fond of the, mullet look.
So I got rid of that.
That, those folks have kept me in line
or in my past.
There's always been an adolescent inpatient unit here
as I commented, I've just was privileged to work there,
with a great bunch of nurses
and a great staff that helped us expand
and improve that adolescent unit.
Strongly encourage that we continue to do that
in the future those kids need a place to go.
I want to thank the adolescent outpatient program,
where we live now, actually started in December of 1980.
I don't know if anyone remembers the old emergency room,
with the drive-through.
But we were there from four to seven
and we started in December with Beverly McCall,
who was the first charge nurse.
Beverly definitely kept me out of trouble,
was the first face that most of these teenagers saw
and I think is very crucial in the successes we had early.
She was followed by Cindy Smith
and now with Jess Anthony,
who is now trying to keep me out of trouble
and she gets credit for some of those great slides
along with Teresa.
We next move to the second floor of the Locust building,
where the pharmacy used to be right behind pharmacy.
There are two good things about that for teenagers,
number one, it was kind of an easy place to find,
it was private, so they could walk in and not get noticed.
But also pharmacy was,
actually a sort of a serendipitous good thing.
It's hard to get kids to sometimes fill the prescriptions,
sometimes get their medicine,
sometimes take their medicines.
Having pharmacy right there created a huge boom,
I would strongly encourage us to continue to link pharmacy
to the outpatient care programming we do.
As we grew, we obviously needed more help,
Cathy Anderson was the first addition to our team.
Cathy was the first advanced provider to join me,
she was absolutely instrumental
in many of our early successes.
She continued to work with us
through most of what we did there.
Debbie Bunch from Cleveland, is an adolescent provider
that joined us early.
And then Cathy eventually,
went on to recruit Teresa,
who then became the sort of the backbone
of our advanced provider group there
and again kept me out of trouble.
As we moved along we also went into community, fair amount.
We had started at the detention home at about the same time.
Bob Stone asked me to go see a sick kid some afternoon
and I haven't been away from there since.
I think important thing that the community,
was we noticed that we have to also help the kids,
where they live.
So we started looking at adolescent services programs
in the county and established what we call,
the Adolescent Services Network
and did fact-checking, information gathering
and program design with community members.
One of those programs was PATHS
which was an afterschool diversion program,
we started at Five Points,
with the help and direction of Dr. Bill Keck,
who was the County Health Department director at that time
and also community medicine at the medical school.
He and Iris Meltzer helped,
and design and implement this program with Cathy and I
Cathy provided the sort of medical onsite stuff,
I would show up and try and cook,
until they threw me out
and decided that their grandmothers cook better than me.
And we had lots of after-school programming
for over a decade.
I think we had an impact on kids, with this
and I think they enjoyed their time there
and improved their lives.
During that same time we noticed we didn't have a lot of,
reproductive health care here,
so with the help of Linda Parenti and her group,
Richmore Tussal and his group, Tim Stover,
we started an adolescent gynecology clinic
in the late 80s and early 90s,
which has continued to grow
and expand into peripheral education
and also now with maternal and fetal,
we have Dr. Wynn,
who is becoming an adolescent gynecologist
in addition to all of his other wonderful skills
and is helping us expand,
the adolescent gynecology program at this time.
The adolescent medicine department,
has lots of special needs
and so we continued to recruit physicians,
with special training.
Initially, we had Dr.Lantzoni, Dr. Holder and Dr. Loud.
Dr. Lantzoni is now a professor at UPENN
and their eating disorder program.
Dr. Holder is professor at Georgetown
and Dr. Loud is chair at Dartmouth.
So we've had some great folks,
who gave me great help,
who went on to bigger and better things.
We have subsequently,
added in addition to Teresa, Julie Callow
and also Lana Borishchak,
as our nurse practitioner core group.
They have helped us out
with interactions with the detention home,
with the interactions with our psych department
and with care of our kids in the clinic.
We've then added Jess Castonguay, Krystal Cole
and most recently Elizabeth Mason
to join Dr. Sondike and the new director for our division.
Those folks have managed to improve
and expand the eating disorder program
and are fast approaching an advanced IOP kind of programming
and we're fairly well known in the Midwest,
as a place to go for eating disorder care,
both inpatient and outpatient.
That program continues to expand Dr. Cohen, Dr. Sondike
also established the gender affirming program.
We've always felt that we were a safe place for kids to go
but now we're not only a safe place
but we provide excellent care.
The other thing that's very important to remember is,
I mentioned the importance of the charge nurses.
We also have an absolutely outstanding support staff.
They're dedicated, they're competent, they're committed,
they're caring and they're the folks
that the teenagers see first.
They hear them on the phone,
they get their phone calls,
They see them in person
that continuity for the teenagers is extremely important.
They don't meet new people
and they need people who are empathetic with them,
who are open to them
and who share some of their values and needs.
That staff has been absolutely important
to every transition we've made,
and in every program we have done.
Lastly, I'd like to really thank the teens,
you know, when you get to see kids
through their various stages of development and growth,
is what makes pediatrics really fun.
They teach you every day.
Those kids have,
probably more than...
Sorry to...
(Dr. Fitzgibbon sobs)
Probably more than anything I have...
So with that, thanks very much for this honor,
it's gonna be our place to be, thanks.
(people applaud)
- I know those kids are gonna miss you more.
Thank you for all your service.
- Thanks
- Thank you.