Gli Amici del Pronto Soccorso si presentano a Palazzo Tornabuoni

Riceviamo e, volentieri, pubblichiamo il comunicato stampa in oggetto

The Amici del Pronto Soccorso Association becomes a Foundation and renews the
Presidency and the Board of Directors.
Elisabetta Bardelli is the new President of the Friends of the Careggi Emergency Room Association
since February 2023, which recently became a Foundation.
The President, together with the new Board of Directors, intends to carry out numerous projects
aimed at supporting and supporting the Emergency Department in the best way possible.
The new team will always work under the guidance of Professor and Dr. Stefano Grifoni, – Head of
Emergency Medicine and Acceptance at the Careggi Hospital in Florence.

The Emergency Room is a precious and fundamentally important service for
the whole community, it intervenes in the prevention, diagnosis and management of acute and
urgent aspects as well as in all of the situations of fragility which concern a wide range population,
especially the elderly, who often find no other type of assistance in need and loneliness.
The non-profit organization Amici Del Pronto Soccorso, which from an association has recently been
transformed into a foundation, created to support health, social and socio-medical assistance in the
field of emergency medicine through projects aimed at improving the quality of the emergency
service. Such as the rescue of Careggi and other hospitals in Tuscany.
The new President of the Amici Del Pronto Soccorso Fondation is Elisabetta Bardelli, with Claudia
Bardelli at her side as Vice President since 1 February 2023.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the two sisters had activated the fundraiser “Amici di Firenze – Now
it’s our turn!” on the GoFundMe platform involving many friends, entrepreneurs, entertainers and
sports personalities as well as other Associations and Foundations, all “distant but united”: together
they managed to raise €393,450.00 that will be allocated to the Foundation with the aim of
supporting the emergency room and the battle of doctors and nurses were facing. Following the
suggestions of Prof. Stefano Grifoni – head of the Emergency Medicine and Admissions Department
of the Careggi Hospital in Florence and technical director of the non-profit organization Amici del
pronto Soccorso – the funds from the collection were used to purchase ultrasound scanners for
diagnosis, blood gas analyzers, respirators and other tools useful for keeping the most serious cases
alive and increasing the chances of recovery.

The new President of the Foundation, Elisabetta Bardelli, who has always been active in
philanthropy actions in the social sphere, Ambassador of the charity Andrea Bocelli Foundation,
Member of the Board of Directors of the ORT-Orchestra Regionale della Toscana and General
Manager of the Antico Setificio Fiorentino, she says: “Today we must not forget the heroism of our
doctors and nurses during the pandemic, we must not lose the gratitude we showed towards them
then; every day they work for us and have our health in hand, putting a lot of love and passion into
what they do: my team and I intend to do the same for them with concrete and tangible actions in
order to provide the best care and assistance to those who have need and is in a difficult situation.”
The members of the new Board of Directors are: Angela Carpio, Francesco Patanè, Guido Ciompi,
Matteo Guidi, Matteo Parigi Bini and Giuseppe Cristiani.
The Foundation team renews its image with a new logo: from the cross, symbol of the Emergency
Department, a heart emerges, aimed at symbolizing both the passion that doctors and nurses put
into their work and the feeling that animates the Foundation, love towards the next; inside the heart
2 hands, of which the larger one represents the help that the Fondazione Amici del Pronto Soccorso
offers to those in need, to all those who – turn to the Emergency Department for an emergency –
feel “small” ( like the other hand) and in a condition of fragility.
In some circumstances, even the loss of a single minute, or an incomplete diagnosis, can jeopardize
a patient’s recovery: the Foundation strongly believes in the importance of using sophisticated,
precise and excellent quality instruments, which guarantee absolute timeliness for this reason, one
of its first objectives will be the purchase of high-tech sanitary machinery to be allocated to the
Emergency Departments of Tuscany, for which the Foundation already has an exceptional partner
at its side: Palazzo Tornabuoni.
Palazzo Tornabuoni is one of the very few urban residence clubs in Europe and the first in the world
to occupy a site of such historical and artistic importance, and by the will of its President, Gabrielle
Taylor, and all the members, which have generously offered its support to organize a fundraising
event in June 2023: a first significant step towards reaching the amount necessary to purchase two
ultrasound scanners, GE logic S8 model with three probes.
“Extremely precious machinery inside an emergency room – explains professor and Dr. Stefano
Grifoni – as they allow for a very wide range of problems to be detected in a timely and non-invasive
manner and therefore to speed up the diagnosis.”

Of great importance for the Foundation is also the support for scientific research and the training
of doctors and nurses whose specialized and periodically updated skills can make the difference; for
this reason, the Foundation has recently funded a specialization course for those who may not have
the economic means to continue their studies and research: this is the 1st level Master’s degree at
the La Sapienza University of Rome concerning ‘patient management critical during traumatic and
catastrophic events (CBRNE/ NaTech)’. The course will allow students to acquire skills on the
treatment and stabilization in a critical area of a large number of subjects who have come into
contact with CBRNE (Chemical, Biological, Radioactive, Nuclear, Explosive) and/or multipletraumatized substances following terrorist acts, epidemics or natural disasters .
Sudden events, such as earthquakes or floods, which unfortunately sometimes affect places and
entire communities, need doctors and nurses who are competent and prepared to help a large
number of people in difficulty and in serious physical and mental health conditions.
A further objective on which the Amici Del Pronto Soccorso Foundation will work is the support and
support of the elderly, one of the most fragile social groups, alone and in need of care and attention:
many future initiatives of the Foundation will be aimed precisely towards the elderly, in order to
guarantee their health and human care.
Lastly, the Foundation intends to work hard on the prevention of serious situations, such as road
accidents, the leading cause of deaths and injuries, through training in schools and raising awareness
among citizens on the correct behavior to adopt to ensure road safety and the containment of the
numerous admissions to emergency departments.
The Amici del Pronto Soccorso Foundation involves citizens at the service of other citizens with the
desire above all to make themselves available to others in the most critical moment, i.e. access to
the emergency room, where every moment can be precious and fundamental to save even a life.