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El Camino Health Foundation Receives Gift to Endow Critical Care Unit

Longtime El Camino Health Foundation board member Pauline Nist has made a gift to create the Pauline and Ken Nist Critical Care Endowment. For Pauline, the donation was the most meaningful way to honor the memory of her beloved husband Ken, who passed away on December 3, 2023.

Pauline and Ken met at Carnegie Mellon University, married in 1970, and after several years in Pittsburgh moved to Harvard, Massachusetts to continue their careers in the computer industry. In 1997, shortly after relocating to Saratoga, California for new jobs, a blood vessel burst in Ken’s stomach and he nearly bled to death. Pauline credits his survival to the outstanding care he received at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, where he endured three surgeries and recuperated over four months, half of them in the critical care unit (CCU). The nursing care, she says, was simply “miraculous.” “You could tell for the doctors, the work was a calling, not simply a job.” The staff was supportive of her wellbeing during that worrisome time too and helped to educate her on Ken’s medical needs.

Pauline made her first gift to El Camino Health Foundation when Ken was discharged, designating it for the CCU’s nurses. In 2002, when his health recovered sufficiently, she joined the El Camino Health Foundation Board of Directors, over time serving as chair, treasurer, and on the finance El Camino Health Foundation Receives Gift to Endow Critical Care Unit and allocations committees. She is most proud of helping to found Hope to Health, the women’s giving circle, and the successful fundraising effort that enabled El Camino Health to purchase the first da Vinci Surgical robot. “Establishing Hope to Health was a big effort that required writing bylaws, recruiting members, and finding projects to fund,” she recalls. “We were a unique committee of the Foundation because we had our own fundraising operation and the members direct where the money goes.” She laughed as she recalled the hospital controller’s worry that El Camino Health would never recoup the investment in the surgical robot, noting that within a year the operating room was fully booked and the hospital needed another one.

Over the years, Ken returned to the critical care unit for various health crises. Despite numerous health challenges, he and Pauline enjoyed traveling and advanced their careers, he as an electrical and software engineer and she as an engineering executive at a variety of computer companies. In his obituary, Pauline described him as a “Renaissance man who never met an engineering challenge he couldn’t tackle. He loved travel, playing piano, Ham Radio, home projects, teasing his pair of Abyssinian cats, playing with his nieces and nephews, and watching Steelers football.”

After he died, she says, “I knew I wanted to do something for Ken’s memory and it had to be for CCU. While Ken didn’t make it this time, El Camino Health gave us 26 years together we shouldn’t have had.”

The Pauline and Ken Nist Critical Care Endowment will ensure the unit has extra resources each year beyond the hospital operating budget to invest in evidence-based nursing initiatives; education training, and staff development; staff recognition; staff wellbeing and respite from the stresses of the care environment; the purchase of new equipment and technologies; enhancements to the patient experience for both patients and family members; and support for the Beacon Award for Excellence application, the highest honor a critical care unit can achieve.

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