Meet Sarah
Sarah Topilko has been with the Stollery Children’s Hospital since 2016 as co-ordinator for the Patient & Family-Centred Care Team.
Sarah has been a co-ordinator for the Patient & Family-Centred Care Team at the Stollery Children’s Hospital since 2016 where she works with Patient Family Advisors (PFAs) as well as Hospital staff to improve patient and family-centred care practices. She provides support and advocacy for families that are currently in the neonatal intensive care units (NICU) across the three Stollery NICU’s (the Stollery Philip C. Etches Neonatal Intensive Care Unit located at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, the David Schiff Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Walter C. Mackenzie Health Sciences Centre and the Stollery NICU at the Sturgeon Community Hospital).
In her spare time, Sarah loves plants, gardening, reading and camping trips with her family in the summer. She also loves all things Disney!
Let’s get to know Sarah:
What do you like most about your job?
My favorite thing about my job is interacting with the families and patients that I support in our NICU spaces and other Stollery units.
Do you have a standout Stollery memory?
When we were able to launch a ‘Welcome to the NICU’ video that a colleague and I, along with our NICU Family Advisory Care Team, had worked on for 18 months. We had a ‘viewing party’ with volunteer families featured in the video and NICU staff. This video is still used by hundreds of families every year, as a way of orientating themselves to the NICU. We thank the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation for funding such an incredible tool for families to access to help with navigating the NICU.
Have donor funds directly impacted the area you work in?
Yes! I have been fortunate enough to see donor funds used in many ways through my work with Patient and Family–Centred Care, but one that stands out to me is funds that have gone towards building or updating family spaces. I mainly work at the Stollery NICU at the Royal Alexandra Hospital and thanks to donors, we’re currently renovating our Bear’s Den family space for the first time in 24 years!
These spaces offer families a place of refuge and comfort during stressful times. We provide snacks, comfort items and much more, all thanks to donor funds. Knowing that we can provide a small measure of comfort to a family during a stressful time means so much.
Do you have a personal connection to the Stollery?
My son Connor started our Stollery journey over 14 years ago, when he was born three months early, weighing only one pound, 10 ounces. We spent 65 days at the Philip C. Etches NICU at the Royal Alexandra Hospital where he grew and became stronger. We learned how to become parents to this fragile, beautiful infant.
Connor has epilepsy, so we still visit the Stollery for neurology appointments. Our youngest son, Bentley. has also had some pretty intense Stollery Emergency visits, where he has always been treated exceptionally. We are so grateful – without the Stollery, our family wouldn’t be the same!
Do you have a favourite Hospital event?
I love Halloween at the Stollery! Getting to hand out candy and prizes to Stollery kids and their families is always so much fun. I love being able to bring a smile to children’s faces while they are in a place that they often don’t expect to be on Halloween!
Do you have a favourite Disney princess or superhero?
As a Disney lover, this is a very tough question for me to answer, but I would have to say that I have always loved Belle from Beauty and the Beast, because of her love of reading. I love reading and aspire to one day have a big enough library that I can use my moveable ladder to access my books, like Belle did!
