Source: Daily Record
More than 100 offspring of hospital staff at Morristown Medical Center participated in a full day of fun that included exercising in the sports medicine department, planting fresh basil in a food-service kitchen, and playing with therapy dogs. Their day also included lunch and snacks, a visit from New York Jets football player Brandon Copeland, a helicopter flyover and a chance to inspect ambulances, hazmat trucks and other emergency vehicles.
The Take Your Child to Work Day organizers set up stations in different departments, then separated the children into four groups, each given their own T-shirt color. “We think it’s really important for children in the community to understand and feel comfortable with the hospital setting,” said Sara Jones, regional director for workforce experience for MMC.
“They rotate through different stations to give them an idea of the different professions in health care — not just the nurses and doctors, but your human resources team, infection prevention, food services, environmental services, sports medicine, so they can understand the different career paths they can get involved in.”
Teaching a group of children to perform a life-saving procedure, Atlantic Mobile Health coordinator Richard Musso broke down the ABC’s of CPR to a Bee Gees beat, appropriately titled Stayin’ Alive.
Musso was following the American Heart Association Stayin’ Alive protocol that instructs CPR practitioners to achieve the proper rate of 100 beats per minute by pumping the victim’s chest to the rhythm of the hit song. The protocol has been lampooned on TV shows such as The Office and The Simpsons, but the steady disco beat helps trainees get in step with the program.
Meanwhile, Soothing Paws pet therapists El Cid, a 9-year-old Portuguese water dog, and Oreo, a bulldog-pit bull mixed breed, made a big hit with their young audiences. El Cid’s owner, Elizabeth Siccone, told the children, “Believe it or not, the people who work here, they enjoy visiting with Cid almost as much as the patents do.”
Siccone says she benefited from pet therapy when she was a patient — the experience inspired her to enlist the friendly-family El Cid. “He showed an aptitude for it, and I realized at the time, what a nice way to give back,” she said. “We’ve been doing it for about six years now. It’s been an incredible experience.”
“This is not a traditional setting where the kids can come to the office with their parents,” Sara Jones laughs. “Obviously, we don’t want to have kids roaming the hospital floors!”