Tag Archives: San Francisco General Hospital

Health and Social Justice Pioneer, Dr. Vicki Alexander

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Vicki Alexander at SFGH with group of patients. Perinatal Health Project.
Vicki Alexander at SFGH. Perinatal Health Project.

Vicki Alexander, MD, has dedicated her life to improving the social determinants of public health.

Alexander attended the UC San Francisco, where she completed her medical degree and residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1974. She went on to Columbia University, where she obtained her master’s degree in Public Health.

Dr. Alexander began as an Ob-Gyn Clinical Instructor at San Francisco General Hospital. She soon became the director of SFGH’s Perinatal Health Project, which served high-risk mothers and infants in the community. Alexander then relocated to New York, working as a clinical instructor and chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Harlem Hospital. Eventually, she returned to the west coast and became the Maternal Child Health Director and Health Officer for the City of Berkeley until she retired in 2006.

Vicki Alexander at SFGH with mother and child. Perinatal Health Project.
Vicki Alexander at SFGH. Perinatal Health Project.

Alexander has participated in many organizations to improve the living conditions for women and children, including: Rainbow Coalition, Center for Constitutional Rights, Reproductive Rights National Network, Planned Parenthood, City Material and Child Health.

In 1978, she established the Coalition to Fight Infant Mortality in Oakland, which helped women with medical care and social issues.

In 2000, Alexander began the Black Infant Health program in Berkeley, which grew from her coalition at Highland Hospital. This was the foundational step to the creation of the Alameda County Coalition to decrease infant mortality.

Alexander is also the current founder and board president of Healthy Black Families (HBF), Inc., which dovetails with the Black Infant Health program. It was founded as a non-profit organization in July 2013 to support the health, growth, development, and future of Black individuals and families.

For her devotion towards health and social justice, Dr. Vicki has won many awards, including: Women of the Year Award (2011); Martin Luther King, Lifetime Achievement Award (2014); National Jefferson Award for Community Service (2015); Alameda County African American Black History Month Award (2017); Madame CJ Walker Award for Black Women (2017); and 15th Assembly District Woman of the Year Award (2017).

To learn more about Dr. Vicki, check out these articles available in our digital collection on HathiTrust and Synapse Archive:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31378005703288&view=plaintext&seq=173
https://synapse.library.ucsf.edu/?a=d&d=ucsf19791004-01.2.3&srpos=3&e=——-en–20–1–txt-%22vicki+alexander%22—–txIN–
https://synapse.library.ucsf.edu/?a=d&d=ucsf19800605-01.2.2&srpos=4&e=——-en–20–1–txt-%22vicki+alexander%22—–txIN–

*Authored by Jazmin Dew*

Early Days of the San Francisco Emergency Service: From the Police Infirmary to Mission Emergency

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This is a guest post by Griffin Burgess, ZSFG Archivist.

The first San Francisco City and County Hospital located on Potrero Avenue was completed in 1872, but it was far from the city center and difficult to get to, which made it less than ideal for emergency cases.

At the time, City Hall housed the police prison, which included an infirmary. This infirmary always had a physician present, so the police and the public became used to using the prison infirmary for emergencies. In 1877, the city formally changed the prison infirmary to the Receiving Hospital and put the Department of Public Health in charge of it.

While the Receiving Hospital provided emergency care to anyone who needed it and played an important role in providing care to the people of San Francisco, the city had no ambulances. To help with this, the police department purchased Chicago-style police patrol wagons, which could carry a stretcher and transport the sick or injured.

In 1893, The World Columbian Exposition and Fair was held in Chicago, Illinois. The new publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle, Michael de Young, attended the fair and saw the working display of the new Studebaker horse-drawn ambulance. When the fair that he organized in San Francisco the next year needed an ambulance, he sent away for a Studebaker ambulance to serve the fair’s hospital.

The first San Francisco ambulance in front of Park Emergency Hospital on Stanyan Street, circa 1910.

After the fair, the Studebaker sat in a warehouse until two members of a women’s society group, Theresa Fair Oelrichs and her sister Virginia Fair, bought it and donated it to the Receiving Hospital. It was up to the city to buy the horses, which was done after a bit of politicking.

The director of the Receiving Hospital, Dr. George Somers, insisted that the ambulance be staffed by interns so that medical care could be provided immediately and en route to the hospital, a unique idea at the time. The ambulances were staffed by male nurses until WWII, when former medical corpsmen began working ambulances. Paramedics were introduced in 1973.

Ambulance in front of the temporary Central Emergency, built after the 1906 earthquake. From left to right: James O’Dea, Annie Andrew, Dr. Fred Zumwalt, Theresa Gile, Charles Bucher RN, William Sullivan, John Thoma (in ambulance).

The 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed much of the city, including City Hall and the Receiving Hospital located in its basement.  A new, temporary Central Emergency building in Jefferson Square on Golden Gate Avenue was the first structure completed after the quake.

Ambulance in front of the temporary Mission Emergency building at 23rd St. and Potrero Ave. Circa 1915.

The first Mission Emergency opened in 1909 at 23rd and Potrero. It was later demolished when the red brick San Francisco City and County Hospital was completed and the new Mission Emergency at 22nd and Potrero was opened in 1917.

In 1912, the Emergency Service received its first automobile ambulance. It was stationed at Park Emergency Hospital so that drivers, who until then had only driven horse-drawn ambulances, could learn to operate it on the relatively empty roads of Golden Gate Park.

Ambulance beside Mission Emergency at 22nd and Potrero Ave, completed in 1917. Photo circa 1920.

Not all of the drivers adjusted well to the switch to automobiles, however. “One of the Park Emergency ambulance drivers eventually required transfer to another City department. On his transfer orders, the hospital’s surgeon wrote, ‘… after numerous attempts to convince him to the contrary, this driver still persists in trying to stop the automobile ambulance by pulling back on the steering wheel as hard as he can and screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘Woooh there!’ I feel he is better suited for a department that still uses horses.'” (From Catastrophes, Epidemics and Neglected Diseases by F. William Blaisdell and Moses Grossman, page 134).

Ambulance at Central Emergency Hospital, circa 1930s.

The new City and County Hospital was one of the most modern complexes in the country and Mission Emergency soon became the hospital best equipped to care for the severely sick and injured, with updated operating rooms, staff, and equipment. By the end of the 1930s, all of the city’s ambulances were taking emergency cases to Mission Emergency rather than the Central Emergency hospital in Civic Center.

SFGH 1930s Photograph Collection on Calisphere

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This is a guest post by Griffin Burgess, ZSFG Archivist.

The Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital Archives has its first collection available as part of UCSF’s digital collections on Calisphere!

The collection consists of over 100 digitized images scanned from 3 x 5 cellulose acetate negatives that date from the 1930s. The images document the exteriors of the hospital buildings as well as interior rooms, hallways, equipment, and staff.

The ZSFG campus looked very different in the 1930s than it does today. These images capture the arrangement and layout of the buildings as they originally were when the campus was completed in 1915 (with the additions of buildings 80 and 90, which were completed in 1938).

Buildings 1, 9, 10, 20, 30, 40, 80, 90, and 100, all of which are still standing today, are represented in the photographs. Notably, the large fire escapes that the four “finger wards” have along their north sides today are missing in the images; they were added in the 1950s.

The collection also includes images of the original administration building and the infectious diseases/tuberculosis building, which were demolished prior to the construction of building 5 in 1976. The TB building housed the chest clinic, where patients were treated for TB for up to five years.

Other images document the interior of the hospital, including images of kitchen facilities, waiting rooms, and patient rooms with various types of equipment, such as medicine bottles, IV stands, and even an iron lung.

In the 1930s, San Francisco had several emergency hospitals throughout the city. The collection includes images of the exteriors of some of these, including Alemany Emergency Hospital, Harbor Emergency Hospital, Central Emergency, and Park Emergency Hospital (which still stands today at the eastern edge of Golden Gate Park).

More ZSFG Archives collections will be added to Calisphere as they are processed.

New HIV/AIDS History Material on Calisphere

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Highlighting some recently added HIV/AIDS history material now available on our digital collections on Calisphere:

AIDS History Project Ephemera Collection

Material includes posters and pamphlets related to the medical and/or social aspects of AIDS and HIV, with a focus on prevention and on addressing misconceptions about the virus and disease. Call number: MSS 2000-31.

Campbell (Bobbi) Diary

Selected material from the diary of Bobbi Campbell, nurse and self-identified “AIDS Poster Boy.” Campbell was one of the first and most public People with AIDS (PWAs), speaking at numerous conferences and other events. The diary is dated July 1983 through February 1984. Call number: MSS 96-33.

Sally Hughes AIDS Research Collection

Selections from research materials collected by historian Sally Hughes in preparation for AIDS oral histories that she conducted. The interviews document the experiences of physicians, nurses, and scientists who played key roles in the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Call number: MSS 2001-04.

AIDS-Patient Needs flowchart. Sally Hughes AIDS Research Collection.

San Francisco AIDS Foundation Records

Material from the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, an organization founded in 1982 to help end the HIV/AIDS epidemic through education, advocacy and direct services for prevention and care. Call number: MSS 94-60.

San Francisco General Hospital Ward 84/86 Records

Selections from the records of San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH) Ward 84/86, one of the first clinics in the country to treat and care for HIV/AIDS patients. Call number: MSS 94-61.

Staff of SFGH Ward 84/86, circa 1985. San Francisco General Hospital Ward 84/86 Records.

As we begin our recently awarded NHPRC grant to provide access to new AIDS history collections, we will be adding more digital items to Calisphere. We will keep you posted as we continue to update our collections.

Irene Pope, Nurse and Activist

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This is a guest post by Griffin Burgess, ZSFG Archivist.

In honor of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, we’re recognizing Irene Pope, nurse and activist.

Irene Pope

Irene Pope was born in Berkeley, CA and graduated from the UCSF School of Nursing in 1947. She worked as a nurse at UC Hospital for eighteen months, then continued her education at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, earning her master’s degree. She returned to the UC as head nurse and later became the assistant director of nursing.

Irene Pope (back row, center) with her UC classmates. From Medi-Cal yearbook, 1947.

Pope came to San Francisco General Hospital in 1960 as director of nursing. She inherited an institution with constant nursing turnover and little to no high-level coordination of nursing activity. Pope transformed the nursing service into a functional, united group while also focusing on improving working conditions for nurses.

At the time, nurses at SFGH were paid very little compared to other San Francisco city workers and nurses around the country. Nurses had never gone on strike before in the U.S. and were in fact prohibited from striking, so in 1966, the SFGH nurses staged a “sickout.” All staff nurses called in sick while Pope and other head nurses kept the hospital going. The sickout lasted three days and resulted in a 40 percent pay raise for the nursing staff.

When asked about the sickout, Pope gave her full support and said, “we are interested in saving the profession, as well as seeking betterment for ourselves.”

In 1971, Pope left SFGH to serve as president-elect and then president of the California Nurses Association, where she lobbied to pass the Nurses Practice Act, paving the way for nurse practitioners. Pope spent her career working tirelessly for nurses and the nursing profession as a whole, and her efforts have created lasting change at ZSFG and beyond.