Auxiliary closing its gift shop

Sunrise Hospital's Auxiliary board has decided to disband, taking with it its gift shop and a decades-long relationship with the medical facility.

Over the years, the nonprofit auxiliary has delivered scholarships to nursing students and thousands of dollars to local charities.

Board members on Monday began selling off all items in the gift shop, located inside Sunrise Hospital's main lobby.

The move, disappointing to Sunrise officials, is the result of a disagreement between the hospital's new director of community services and the auxiliary board about the nonprofit's role in the volunteer program. About a dozen members of the auxiliary believe the hospital's volunteer program and the nonprofit should act as one core unit. Hospital officials say the two are, and will remain, separate.

"We were one organization until she came in,'' Glenna J. Moore, a former auxiliary member, said about Caren Bedsworth, the hospital's director of community services.

Bedsworth, who started in May, says this is untrue and that the hospital's volunteer program and auxiliary have always acted separately.

The auxiliary board may not have recognized this, she said.

Bedsworth said she met with the auxiliary board and "reinforced the separation that existed already.''

"The auxiliary is part of our volunteer program but it has always had its own board and bylaws and financially is separate from the hospital,'' said Amy Stevens, system vice president for Sunrise Health, which operates Sunrise Hospital and Sunrise Children's Hospital.

Bedsworth and Stevens said they believe there may be an unmet desire on part of auxiliary members to have greater inclusion in the hospital.

But Shirley Mulrooney, a member of the auxiliary board, said, "When you've been told that you've been doing things wrongs for the past 40 years, that's big enough reason to end a relationship.''

The decision to disband and close the gift shop came earlier this month during a special meeting by the auxiliary board, Mulrooney said.

According to the meeting's minutes, the discussion leading up to the board's vote centered around what members believed were changes by Bedsworth.

"We just didn't have enough volunteers for two groups," Moore said. "You cannot run a gift shop, the front desk, work on the floors and in the offices and raise money. We were just one family and that's how we like it. ... We did it right for 48 years and everybody was happy. Then one lady came in and ruined the whole thing.''

Bedsworth said though the auxiliary and its gift shop falls under the hospital's overall volunteer program, the auxiliary is separate because of its nonprofit status. That means auxiliary members are under the direction of the auxiliary board and work in the gift shop.

All proceeds from the gift shop are donated to charity or are used for nursing scholarships, Moore said.

This year, those scholarships paid the tuition of 22 nursing students, she said.

General hospital volunteers not associated with the auxiliary are under the direction of Bedsworth.

Though hospital officials are disappointed in the nonprofit's decision, there is still hope the auxiliary will be reinvented through new leaders.

"The auxiliary creates way for people to become involved in the fields of medicine and the opportunity to get the education that will allow them to become professionals in our hospital as well as others,'' Stevens said. "So they really have tremendously important roles in the health care environment.''

Stevens said hospital guests will be diverted to the for profit gift shop located in Sunrise Children's Hospital. That gift shop is operated by an outside vendor, she said.