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Scripps Mercy hospital’s roots go back 125 years

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When Sister Rosanne McGrath walks through the doors at Scripps Mercy Hospital, she is extending a 125-year-old mission that began on July 9, 1890.

That’s the day Mother Mary Michael Cummings admitted John O’Connell to St. Joseph’s Dispensary, an infirmary that occupied two floors above a men’s clothing store in downtown San Diego.

According to the meticulous log kept by Cummings and fellow nuns of the Sisters of Mercy, O’Connell spent 13 days in bed with malaria before he was sent home in good condition.

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In their first year serving the city, the sisters admitted 117 patients. That was the opening chapter of a healing ministry that continues today at the hospital, which has one campus in Hillcrest and the other in Chula Vista.

Scripps Mercy will commemorate the organization’s anniversary Saturday with a public celebration at 10 a.m. on the Hillcrest hospital’s front lawn.

The festivities are part of a larger effort to maintain and sustain what the sisters started.

Currently, only six members of the order still work regularly at the hospital, which opened in 1924 with enough medically trained nuns to fill the order’s nearby convent. Although they no longer run the day-to-day operations, the Sisters of Mercy still visit patients in their rooms, helping to celebrate births and mourn passings.

“When I go into a room, I can pretty much tell if somebody’s ready to listen to my jokes or if they want to be comforted or if they want to pray,” McGrath said.

Scripps Mercy is the region’s only Roman Catholic hospital. At the Hillcrest site, that fact is reinforced by a large statue of Jesus Christ in the lobby and the crucifixes in each patient room. These symbols, McGrath said, signify how the hospital views the men, women and children it cares for.

“The people here aren’t just bodies that are repaired,” she said. “They are human beings made in the likeness and image of God. It is from that perspective that we treat them or talk to them or do things for them.”

Healing the soul

As the number of Mercy sisters has decreased, the Catholic Church has worked to sustain the core tenets of faith that led to the hospital’s establishment.

When the Sisters of Mercy decided to sell their Hillcrest facility to the Scripps Health system in 1995 because of financial pressures facing smaller, free-standing hospitals, the transaction came with the requirement that the hospital remain Catholic and that its doctors and nurses continue to follow the ethical and religious guidelines published by the church.

(The same conditions apply to the Scripps Mercy campus in Chula Vista.)

A special committee run by the nonprofit Scripps Mercy Hospital Foundation appoints a vice president of mission integration, who is responsible for bridging faithful and secular worlds.

Mark Zangrando, a former Jesuit priest, took over that job in 2013.

He said a big part of his responsibilities is helping newcomers understand Scripps Mercy’s legacy and mission. A special orientation class, which must be attended by all new hires, provides that context. Additional outreach is extended to vendors and salespeople who regularly pass through the hospital but don’t technically work there.

“Whether somebody is Christian or atheist, we want them to know and respect why we are unique. We really believe that the healing of the soul is part of the healing ministry,” Zangrando said.

This message is received differently by different people.

Tom Gammiere, Scripps Mercy’s chief executive for 16 years, said it can be a litmus test for who ends up spending a career there and who moves on.

“The people who feel drawn here by the mission, they stay. The people who are in it for other reasons, they leave,” he said.

Patient care

Doctors practicing at Scripps Mercy must agree to follow bylaws that differ from those governing other Scripps Health facilities.

Ethical and religious directives laid out in a 40-page pamphlet published by the Catholic Church prohibit abortion, sterilization and contraception. They also specify respect for human dignity and the provision of holy sacraments made available to Catholic patients.

Gammiere said Scripps Mercy takes care to avoid conflicts wherever possible.

For example, mothers who wish to undergo tubal ligation — otherwise known as having their tubes tied — after giving birth don’t deliver at Scripps Mercy.

While some might think that this coda of religious conduct has resulted in two hospital campuses of inflexible faith, that is not the case to its historical and current operators.

For example, Scripps Mercy in Hillcrest recently created a prayer room for its Muslim staff. Sister Mary Jo Anderson, who joined Scripps Health’s governing board in 2005, said this accommodation reflects the large margin of flexibility that has always existed there.

“Up until the 1960s, we were the only place in town where Jewish doctors could practice,” she said.

And Cummings’ original log book proves that the sisters have never restricted their care to only Catholics. In addition to name, date and diagnosis, the sisters routinely recorded patients’ religious affiliations, noting whether they were “Catholic, non-Catholic, Jewish, pagan, heathen or infidel.”

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