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Project Details
Created:
11/14/2008
Project Title:
Therapeutic Toy Drive and Anxiety Management Program for Pediatric patients in our Community hospital
Project Category:
Other
Project Status:
Ongoing
CASE Competition
CASE Competition:
Oklahoma Campus Compact - Oklahoma Campus Compact
Grant Winner
Project Snapshot
Problem:
Solution:
Student Information
College or University:
SOUTHWESTERN OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY WEATHERFORD
State:
Oklahoma
Student Name:
Collins Uzuegbu, Meagan Decher
Year in College:
Senior
Major:
NURSING
Faculty Advisor
Advisor Name:
Community Partner
Partner Name:
WEATHERFORD REGIONAL HOSPITAL
Student and Community
What societal problem does your project solve?
Our project is designed to help our local hospital to provide some sort of comforting, developmentally appropriate diversional activities to their pediatric patients. By providing toys and games to our local hospital, we hope to decrease the children's anxiety and make their hospital experience less frightening. We have noticed, through our clinical rotations in some of the local hospitals in our community, that there is virtually no provision of age-appropriate fun activities for their pediatric population. Our goal is to mobilize the community to participate in providing age-appropriate, developmentally centered toys and games that would facilitate the therapy/course of recovery for sick children visiting the hospital. We also intend to educate the hospital staff at their in-service on how to use the toys to benefit their pediatrics patients.What would be the measurable outcomes of the partnership that you propose to create between the community and your educational institution?
We want to see good number of toys and games donation to the hospital from members of our community. We also want to see substantive participation of the nursing staff in using the donated toys to promote the health and wellbeing of their pediatric population. Finally, we will measure the effects of this gesture on the pediatric patients by comparing the frequency of crying and compliance (or lack thereof) during nursing and medical care procedures since the program started(toy therapy) to their rate before the program was implemented.How would you, with the support of your faculty advisor on campus and some one from the community, work together around this specified community issue?
With the help of our faculty advisor, we intend to share our vision with local churches and businesses, whom we hope would mobilize their groups to make toy/games donations towards the project. We also intend to go as far as sending out letters to these anticipated project partners as well as make direct appeals for their support and participation in the project. Our faculty advisor would help us through these mobilization strategies.How would you envision sharing power and decision making in the partnership? In other words, instead of doing something for the community how would you do something with the community?
Instead of us relying exclusively on the donation of the CASE funds to our hospital for this project, we rely heavily on the philantropic and progressive spirit of the members of our community to provide these materials for our children. We believe that by involving the community through the local businesses, religious and civic establishments, they would see the project as not THE STUDENTS' project, but THE COMMUNITY'S project. That way, we would get their maximum participation.How would you collect data on what the project was doing and use it in the decision making process?
We would create an outcome measurement tool in collaboration with our school's statistics department to ensure that correct data are collected as it relates to the anticipated positive changes that this proposal would bring to the care of the increasing number of pediatric patients that are being treated in our hospital. We believe that information collected through this project would inspire other projects with intents similar to this one and targeted towards the pediatrics patient population.What would be the project activities? Give examples of how the strengths already existing in the community will be acknowledged, built upon, and enhanced in the partnership to solve the problem.
Members of our community are always willing to make sacrifices that they believe would benefit this community. There have been various community projects that saw tremendous material and physical contributions from many members of our community irrespective of their economic/situational backgrounds. Our hospital's multi-million dollar new facility was built over two years ago, almost exclusively by inspirational contributions (in some cases as little as below $100) from members of the community. We believe that in as much as we are able to sell our vision to this community, they'll run with it. They'll make donations to ensure that this project becomes a resounding success. And, honestly, we envisage this project opening up avenues for the community to pay even more attention to various other needs of children in our community that have hitherto not received front seat attention in our townhall meetings.What obstacles or challenges might you encounter in implementing your project, and how would you address them?
We recognize that the economy is shaky right now, and we expected this to show through the number of individual contributions if we had decided to go for individual contributions. However, we intend to encourage groups such as churches, businesses, and civic philantropic organisations to make group donations towards the project. That way, not only would it enable those individuals that are willing but unable to purchase single toys by themselves to participate, it would also ensure that more materials are donated because the groups are more likely to get discount sales than individuals.
Recruiting Volunteers:
Would you recruit additional student volunteers? If so, how?
Enlisting Partners:
Do you envision enlisting businesses, or other organizations, etc., to help; if so, how?
How would the award money be used here?
If your project idea is an innovation of an existing
program, what are its current funding sources?
What do you anticipate learning from engaging in the service project?
We have volunteered in various capacities in a lot of community activities with volunteer opportunities, but we've never created a development project with opportunities for other people to volunteer their services and resources until now. We believe that this project would grant us the opportunity to experience what it means to be a crusader for development and growth in our community. It will also add another brick to our growing interest in championing community development projects. But, above all, we want to see first-hand, the effects of toy therapy in pediatric patients in our community. We've studied about it in our Pediatrics class, but this will be an opportunity to bring the proven positive impact of this gesture to our community.If the above questions have not enabled you to convey the essence and value of your project’s impact, use this space to supplement your answers.
Please submit an abstract (clear summary) of your proposed project idea.
We have noticed that children visiting our local hospital for treatment (already beffudled by the enigma of being sick) in many instances throw tantrums on entrance into the facility. In cases where they don't cry, they often exhibit obvious sense of fear, confusion, and anxiety while awaiting or receiving medical treatment. We believe that this complicates the hospital experience of these children as well as retard their response to treatment. Despite that, most hospitals in Western Oklahoma (our local hospital included) have no diversionary or age-appropriate play equipment for their pediatric population. We, from knowledge garnered in our pediatric class last semester and our on-going gynecology class, believe that if we are able to provide toys and games to these hospitals and educate the staff on their uses for the kids, they will have a better hospital experience and better health outcome. That is why we (Meagan and I) have proposed, with support from our school, to mobilize our comunity to make donations for toy and game supplies to this hospital to ensure good treatment and health outcome for our pediatric patient population.User Login
