Philip Sunshine, a physician at Stanford University, played a key role in establishing neonatal theory as a medical specialist, revolutionizing premature and critical neonatal care, previously with little chance of survival, died April 5 at his home in Cupertino, California. He was 94 years old.
His death was confirmed by his daughter, Diana Sunshine.
More than half of these unimaginably vulnerable patients died shortly after birth before Dr. Sunshine and a few other doctors became interested in caring for infants in the late 1950s and early 60s. Insurance companies will not pay to treat them.
Dr. Sunshine, a pediatric gastroenterologist, thought it could save many premature babies. At Stanford, he sought a team of doctors from multiple disciplines and treated them in special intensive care units. Together with colleagues, he pioneered ways to feed his toddlers formulas and assist with breathing with ventilation.
“We were able to keep babies alive that would not have survived,” Dr. Sunshine said in a 2000 oral history interview with the American Academy of Pediatrics' Center for Childhood History. “And now, everyone takes this for granted.”
The early 1960s were a turning point in caring for premature babies.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Neonatology was first used in the 1960 book, “Isises of Newborn,” by Baltimore pediatrician Alexander J. Schaffer. By then, Stanford's Neonatology School (one of the first in the country) was in operation.
In 1963, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, the second son of President John F. Kennedy, was born almost six weeks earlier. He passed away 39 hours later. The crisis unfolded on the front pages of newspapers nationwide, putting pressure on federal health officials to begin allocating money to research newborns.
“Kennedy's story was a major turning point,” Dr. Sunshine told Aha News, a publication of the American Hospital Association in 1998.
As Stanford University's Newborn Dean from 1967 to 1989, Dr. Sunshine helped train hundreds, perhaps thousands, of doctors who continued to work in neonatal intensive care units around the world. When he retired in 2022 at the age of 92, the survival rate for babies born in 28 weeks exceeded 90%.
“Phill is one of the 'originals' in neonatology, a neonatologist and one of the best in our history,” wrote David K. Stevenson, head of the neonatology division at Stanford, who succeeds Dr. Sunshine, in the 2011 graduate journal.
Dr. Sunshine recognized that caring for young children requires both technical expertise and human connection. He urged the hospital to allow parents to visit the newborn's intensive care unit to hold their children, and found skin-skin contact between the mother and baby to be beneficial.
He also encouraged nurses to give them more autonomy and to speak when they think they are wrong.
“Our nurses have always been a very important caretaker,” Dr. Sunshine told oral history. “Throughout my career, I worked with nursing staff who were very aware of baby issues before doctors did, and they still do.
“There's this deep kindness in Phil, for babies, us, and everyone,” said Dr. Sunshine and Cecele Quaintance, a newborn nurse who has worked for over 50 years, in a blog post on Stanford Medicine's Children's Health.
“Everyone has the same level of importance to him,” she said.
It was a long time. The pressure was extraordinary.
“He was calming, encouraging and unable to flap his wings at all,” Dr. Stevenson said in an interview. “He would say, 'If you're going to spend the night working in the hospital, what's a better way to do that than giving you 80, 90 years of life?” ”
Philip Sunshine was born in Denver on June 16, 1930. His parents, Samuel and Molly (Fox) Sunshine, owned a pharmacy.
He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Colorado in 1952 and graduated in 1955 to stay in medical school.
After his first year of his residency at Stanford, he was drafted by the US Navy and served as an EU. When he returned to Stanford in 1959, he trained under pediatrician Louis Gulac, and later developed a modern neonatal intensive care unit at Yale University.
“He took care of my newborns and made everything so interesting,” Dr. Sunshine said.
As there was no neonatal fellowship at the time, Dr. Sunshine pursued advanced training in pediatric gastroenterology and pediatric metabolism fellowships.
“It was a very exciting time,” he said in a Stanford Medicine's Children's Health Blog post. “People from a variety of backgrounds were bringing skills to care for newborns, like newborns, cardiologists, people like me who are interested in GI problems with newborns. I picked up a lot of information and enthusiasm from them.
Dr. Sunshine married Sarah Elizabeth Vryland, known as Beth, in 1962.
Along with his wife and daughter Diana, he was survived by four other children, Rebecca, Samuel, Michael and Stephanie. and nine grandchildren.
In many respects, Dr. Sunshine's surname was approved. It is an ideal word for his profession and method.
“Apart from being a father or grandfather, completely apart from being a neonatal grandfather, he really brought sunlight to every room,” Stanford University neonatal scholar Susan R. Hintz said in an interview. “He was a soothing figure, especially in these very stressful moments. The nurses will always tell me, 'He's someone everyone remembers.'”
