President Ellen Book presiding.
Visitors: Chris Morrison, RC of Coral Gables
Guests: RYE Exchange Student Ilaria Rundeddu and her mother Laura Rundeddu visiting from Cagliari, Italy

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Susan Redding, longtime South Miami community activist, passed away Feb. 8. The funeral service is 7:00PM tomorrow, Feb. 15, at the Stanfill Funeral Home, U.S.-1 at SW 108 Street.

RYE Exchange Student Ilaria Rundeddu’s mother Laura Rundeddu visiting from Cagliari, Italy will be here until Friday.

Craftfest Meeting: 6:30PM at the South Miami Library. Don’t forget, every Rotarian is required to participate in two shifts that weekend.

Diana Phillips asked for one more violunteer to spend an hour reading the submissions and help determine winners for the 8th graders participating in the Stehle Essay Contest. Fabio Fernandez rose to the challenge. Way to go, Fabio!

March 16 is the Fashion Show sponsored our club and hosted BankUnited. Posters and 4”x9” envelope inserts are available to help promote the event.

The Club’s Garage Sale is Saturday, April 8 at the home of Club President Ellen Book. Contributions to the garage sale may be delivered to Ellen’s home anytime AFTER March 8.

Sargent-at-Arms Mike Mills reported that the club received a check for $84.75 for the laser and ink cartridge program.

Barbara Kornblau will be calling a planning meeting for the Spelling Bee committee.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT GO TO BERNIE’S
for the Tuesday, April 18, meeting. The Rotary Club of South Miami will join with the Rotary Club of Perrine-Cutler Ridge-Palmetto Bay to meet the inbound Group Study Exchange (GSE) team from Scotland at the Tony Roma’s Restaurant located in the Port Royal Shopping Center 18851 South Dixie Highway.

2006 District Assemby April 22 is the District Assembly at Signature Gardens. The purpose of the district assembly is to develop the leadership and motivation skills of newly elected Club officers and provide members with Rotary knowledge. As the Dade County Youth Fair is fond of saying, “Be there, or be square!”

Kathy Sparger (meeting speaker) and President Ellen Book

Program Chair Pansy Graham introduced Kathy Sparger, RN, MSN of South Miami Hospital. Kathy, who is also a member of The Rotary Club of Miami-Dadeland, oversees all aspects of nursing for the hospital and is spearheading the new electronic monitoring system for critical care patients, known as E-ICU. Following a brief film showing how the E-ICU unit functions, Kathy explained that this is the first of its kind in South Florida. The E-ICU uses hi-tech video cameras to observe patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The lenses on these cameras are powerful enough to read the ridges on a quarter placed on the patients bed cover and are transmitted along fiber-optic cable to a monitoring station in Doral where teams of doctors and nurses currently monitor 72 patients. Especially designed to provide safety for these ICU patients, the unit helps to overcome the shortage of critical care physicians and nurses plaguing the country.
Affectionately referred to as the “Doc in a box,” the system monitors EKG’s, Blood Pressure and other critical data. Each critical care patient is monitored at least once every hour. The system represents and $8 million installation investment and $4 million, annually to maintain. Eventaully, it will be added to all the hospitals in the Baptist Health system.