By: Vivian Nguyen Quick feet. Kind hearts. Hungry stomachs. These all describe the diligent nurses of the eighth floor at UMC Brackenridge Hospital. All night long, they go from room to room to make sure patients are comfortable and as healthy as possible. While working on the trauma floor can be difficult, they still manage to always help patients with love and care. In 2011, when a couple of UT students wanted to express their gratitude towards the nurses, they created Care Teams, a group within HOPE Austin. By delivering tasty meals/treats and adorable decorations, they were able to let the nurses know that their hard work did not go unnoticed. For this 2014-2015 academic school year, we were able to have our first Care Teams project in November. Going with a Thanksgiving theme, we created miniature peanut butter chocolate acorns, snickerdoodle cookies, and 7-layer pumpkin bars. For decorations, we made paper pumpkins (which had various thank you expressions written all over them), hand turkeys, fall leaves, and “Happy Thanksgiving” lettering to put up on their wall. When we arrived at the hospital and presented our gifts, they were absolutely overjoyed. I could hear them saying things like, “Is that for us?!” and “That looks so delicious!”. Veronica, a nurse, was grateful for the treats we had brought in. She had mentioned how it would get very busy, especially during the holidays, because the nurses were trying to comfort the patients until the doctors would come back in the mornings. So, she said our treats were a pleasant surprise and nice break. One nurse was also thrilled because she had forgotten to bring in something to eat that day.
Being able to do acts of kindness like this provides joy to the giver and receiver. I feel no greater happiness than when I do little things for others, which definitely includes showing appreciation for nurses and seeing their genuine excitement. It is so important to let the nurses know how thankful we are for their dedication, generosity, and patience, because giving back to those who work for our community is a great way to develop a foundation for love among all people. I’m glad we were able to deliver baked goods to such hard-working nurses and I am looking forward to sending them more delicious foods in the future!
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This week HOPE Austin volunteered at the Mother's Milk Bank in Austin. Here's what one of our members, Travis Pham, had to say about his experience:
While volunteering at the Mothers Milk Bank, my role was to label all of the bottles that had been pasteurized and cooled in the refrigerator. Once the bottles were labeled, it was stored in the freezer for further testing. By volunteering at the milk bank, I became aware of the well-coordinated system the Mothers Milk Bank Austin has in order to provide the safest and best quality breast milk to the newborns that need them. The experience from volunteering at the milk bank was very gratifying and educational. As a student volunteer, I was able to contribute to preventive care for babies. In fact, I was actually having hands-on experience in the preventive care of a population, which is part of my academic focus, public health. Additionally, the staff at Mothers Milk Bank Austin was very welcoming, and I can see myself in the near future volunteering there again. This past Saturday HOPE Austin had its first volunteering event of the year! For many of our volunteers, this was their first event ever with HOPE Austin. This was also the first time that St. David's organized this type of event. This was my first time going to a volunteer event as an officer as well. There were a lot of "firsts" for everyone and I thought that was pretty cool!
By: Amy Wu, HOPE Austin Public Relations Officer 2013-2014
Edited: Pearl Xin If you haven’t heard of us before, HOPE Austin stands for Health, Outreach, Promotion, and Education in Austin. We are a student-run UT organization that volunteers with health-related organizations and events around the local Austin community. I am not a pre-med student at UT, but a 3rd year English major who is also in the Business Honors Program. I joined HOPE Austin after a chance conversation with one of my current co-officers on a bus ride home to Dallas during my freshman year. Since then, the organization has filled many roles for me, all of which have added different dimensions to my college life. I’m writing today to share two meaningful experiences that have imprinted the ideas of HOPE upon me and other members. My first two HOPE Austin events were helping the Breast Cancer Resource Center of Austin (BCRC) paint and garden the new office on Medical Arts Street. I still have paint stains on one of my sweaters from the event, and I will always remember to put bone meal before soil when planting flowers. What also remains with me is how I met a close-knit group of about 10 members who had also volunteered. They were my view into the world of the pre-med and pre-health students at UT. I learned about their goals and interests, bonding with them among the soil, dirt, and paint. To be honest, at the end of the projects, I found the experience to be… almost typical. I didn’t see the true impact of the work we had done until we gathered at the end of the morning and spoke with Phyllis Rose, the BCRC coordinator that works with HOPE. She thanked us, saying she understood that while it might seem trivial or tiring to paint and garden for an office, it contributed to BCRC’s mission. Each breast cancer patient or survivor was now going to walk up the pathway we planted full of flowers, and enter a headquarters that is not the sterile, stark white of a hospital or doctor’s office. We had helped BCRC enhance the place where patients and breast cancer survivors would become part of support system. Phyllis emphasized that it means a lot for a just-diagnosed breast cancer victim to enter an office with a human feel to it; the patient can receive support in a comfortable environment, which extends beyond the normal medical care received in a hospital. I left that day knowing the immediate impact I had (even feeling it in my back and legs), and discovered a growing understanding and sympathy for the breast cancer community of Austin. Two years ago on that bus, Juliette Tran, my co-officer and our current coordinator for Care Teams told me about Care Teams, a team within HOPE that makes and delivers food and decorations to the nurses at University Medical Center Brackenridge. We are a third-party support system for the often under-appreciated nursing staff. Talking to her back then, and even now, I saw how much these projects meant to her and how this side of medical volunteering was an opportunity for me to get involved with the human side of hospitals and healthcare. The semester after hearing this story, I joined HOPE Austin. My personal memories of hospitals are filled with the smell of antiseptic and rubbing alcohol, and the bleak fluorescent light against bare beige walls. This past November, I walked into UMC Brackenridge with a team of about five other students, armed with turkey cutouts, sweet potato casserole, and mini waffle-cone cornucopias stuffed with candy. We were on a mission to do a floor makeover and leave behind edible evidence of appreciation for the nurses. I was expecting smiles and thank-you’s (all of which we received), but for some reason, I didn’t expect the muffled surprise and humility that I saw. I had automatically assumed nurses at Brackenridge, and any other hospital, would know that people appreciated them and would be happy to show it. The nurses seemed sheepishly thankful of our appreciation, exclaimed how excited they were for the food, and of course, continued to steadily do their job. I left one hour later realizing that while patients and doctors do appreciate the nurses, it never hurts to show them that students are willing to volunteer just to extend an extra indication of thanks. Care Teams has become one of my favorite parts of HOPE Austin; The themes are fun, the time goes by quickly (almost to the point of an occasional time crunch), and we can be proud of our results. And of course, being able to dress up a hospital environment makes Care Teams a fun part of HOPE Austin. To sum up, the members, officers, and organizations we work with seem to always find a way to immediately convey the impact we’ve had on them. As a non-future-doctor, I’ve asked my fellow future doctors (although not all our members are future doctors or even want a future health occupation) how this volunteering impacts them – I can summarize it for you in one sentence: they’ve been connected and exposed to the human side of medicine, they’ve built relationships with other students and the city of Austin, and they’ve been part of a community founded on addressing health issues. |
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