{"id":147812,"date":"2026-02-24T12:16:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T17:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=147812"},"modified":"2026-02-24T12:16:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T17:16:14","slug":"medical-students-bake-brownies-spread-warmth-at-hospice-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=147812","title":{"rendered":"Medical Students Bake Brownies Spread Warmth at Hospice House"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo caption:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0L-R St. Luke\u2019s School of Medicine students Casey Clark, Emily Adams, Natasha Joglekar, Maia Clayton<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Every Friday afternoon, students from the Temple\/St. Luke\u2019s School of Medicine get together to bake brownies. They meet at the Brian D. Perin Hospice House in Bethlehem to fill the communal kitchen and adjacent halls with the scent of warm chocolate and nostalgia. The weekly baking visit accents a space whose mission is to make families feel at home.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hospice House is such a wonderful place,\u201d said Natasha Joglekar, a second-year medical student in the St. Luke\u2019s University Hospital program. \u201cIt\u2019s so peaceful. It\u2019s just like a warm hug.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Brian D. Perin Hospice House has served the Lehigh Valley for two decades, caring for those receiving end-of-life support and their families. The Hospice House conveys its purpose through a place that patients can call home.<\/p>\n

With 24-hour visitation and inpatient hospice teams, the facility provides much more than palliative care. The Hospice House can introduce aromatherapy, massage therapy and pet therapy to a patient\u2019s care plan. The staff even arranged a penguin visit from the Lehigh Valley Zoo. And now, the house offers a weekly brownie hug.<\/p>\n

Through an elective class taught by Dr. Ric Baxter of the Temple\/St. Luke\u2019s School of Medicine, students began visiting the Hospice House in 2024. After one class, Joglekar and several students stayed to bake.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe simple act of doing something for someone else with no intention for acknowledgement or self-gain makes these students remarkable, and I am honored and humbled to be associated with them,\u201d Dr. Baxter said.<\/p>\n

The baking excursion provides an opportunity for medical students to connect their education to a sense of place. The communal kitchen sits in the center of Hospice House, and families can visit students and chat if they choose. The afternoon gives medical students insight into how environment enhances care.<\/p>\n

\u201cI appreciate being in the physical space and seeing how wonderful it is and how much it brings the emotional volume down for people,\u201d Joglekar said. \u201cPeople can really just relax, families and patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

The activity also ties medical students to their community, a key function of the Temple\/St. Luke\u2019s School of Medicine. Based at St. Luke\u2019s University Hospital in Fountain Hill, it is the Lehigh Valley\u2019s only four-year medical school, an example of the unique culture that has made St. Luke\u2019s the top-ranked health care system in the country. In 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ranked St. Luke\u2019s #1 ahead of Houston Methodist and Mayo Clinic as the nation\u2019s top health system for quality, safety and patient experience\u2014an objective recognition reaffirming St. Luke\u2019s preeminent position as a leader among the largest and most respected health care providers in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got feedback from people at Hospice House that the smell just seemed to make the environment more homey, so we kept it up,\u201d Joglekar said. \u201cIt\u2019s a really simple activity, but people have a certain nostalgic attachment to baking. It brings up feelings of being cared for. It\u2019s for the environment, because it benefits the families and the staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

By cultivating medical students who have Lehigh Valley roots, St. Luke\u2019s is helping to train more doctors and secure the region\u2019s health and well-being. And by visiting the Brian D. Perin Hospice House, those students are contributing more than medicine to the community.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

About St. Luke\u2019s<\/strong><\/p>\n

Founded in 1872, St. Luke\u2019s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network with annual net revenue of more than $4.5 billion. With 23,000+ employees at 16 hospital campuses and 350+ outpatient sites, it is the Lehigh Valley\u2019s biggest employer.<\/p>\n

The Network\u2019s service area includes 11 counties in two states: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey. St. Luke\u2019s hospitals operate the largest network of trauma centers in Pennsylvania, with the Bethlehem Campus being home to St. Luke\u2019s Children\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n

Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke\u2019s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania. In partnership with Temple University, the Network established the Lehigh Valley\u2019s first and only four-year medical school. It also operates the nation\u2019s oldest continuously operated School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 50+ fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with 500+ residents and fellows.<\/p>\n

In 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ranked St. Luke\u2019s #1 \u2013 ahead of Houston Methodist and Mayo Clinic \u2013 as the nation\u2019s top health system for quality, safety and patient experience. This objective recognition\u00a0based on hospital data reported to the government\u00a0reaffirms St. Luke\u2019s preeminent position as a leader among the largest and most respected health care providers in the country.<\/p>\n

St. Luke\u2019s has been named a Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades Top Hospital and a Newsweek World\u2019s Best Hospital. It is the only Lehigh Valley-based health care system to earn Medicare\u2019s five-star ratings (the highest) for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction. In 2025, the Network earned straight A\u2019s from Leapfrog across all of its acute care hospitals. It has earned 100 Top Hospital designations from Premier 11 years in a row, including in 2021 when its flagship University Hospital was identified as THE #1 TEACHING HOSPITAL IN THE COUNTRY. Utilizing the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of SLUHN\u2019s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Information provided to TVL by:
\nGary Blockus<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo caption:\u00a0L-R St. Luke\u2019s School of Medicine students Casey Clark, Emily Adams, Natasha Joglekar, Maia Clayton Every Friday afternoon, students from the Temple\/St. Luke\u2019s School of Medicine get together to … Continue reading Medical Students Bake Brownies Spread Warmth at Hospice House<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147813,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-valley"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/sluhn-brownies.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147812"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147814,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147812\/revisions\/147814"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/147813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}