Redmond trauma room dedicated to Dr. Patricia Schaefer

St. Charles Redmond recently added a feature to its newly expanded emergency department. In addition to the new patient care rooms and state-of-the-art equipment, outside the trauma room there is a plaque dedicated to the memory of Dr. Patricia Schaefer, an emergency room physician who was killed in an automobile accident in 2002.

“Dr. Schaefer was a valued member of our medical staff,” said Dr. Matthew Eschelbach, director of emergency medicine at St. Charles Redmond. “Her unexpected death left us all saddened. Any time a colleague is lost, it is a devastating blow, to not only other physicians, but to the nurses and colleagues she worked with. She was well liked and wellrespected by everyone who worked with her.

“I thought it would be a fitting tribute to name our trauma room after her,” he continued. Karen Wallace, a nurse who served with Schaefer, remembers that, “She was just a wonderful person, brilliant and compassionate. She could be having a bad day and go into a patient care room and always was kind and nice. No matter what a patient needed, she made sure they received the care they needed. Once you got to know her she was fun, a joyful person."

“Her loss was just tragic,” Wallace said. “The night she died, she was coming in to help us, to put in extra hours, right from choir practice at church.”

Schaefer worked in the St. Charles Redmond emergency department from 1994 until her death in December 2002. “A lot of people from the community have missed her,” Wallace said. “She had cared for people for so long. They loved her.”

Eschelbach, Wallace and hospital administrator Patrick Varga worked together to order the plaque and have it placed outside the new trauma room they have named in memory of Schaefer.