Every year on May 6 is the annual start of Nurses Week in commemoration of Florence Nightingale's birthday. She would have been 201 this year! She brought her knowledge and passion to the bedside during the Crimean War to improve hospital conditions. Those efforts reduced the hospital's death rate by two-thirds. To honor her memory, we can bring our passion as nurses to the campus and community by volunteering. There are many amazing benefits to volunteering. It can provide professional development, serve as an opportunity to experience new and interesting fields, bolster your networking, and so much more. Not to mention it is scientifically proven to increase your mental wellbeing, sense of purpose, and most important of all, it's fun!
Nurses at the NIH are no strangers to volunteering. Two nurses from the Nurse Wellness Committee (NWC) have some fantastic stories to share. Carrie Wellen, an OR Nurse in the Clinical Center, started her own volunteering project called “Spread the Warmth." This project makes blankets for the homeless using surgical instrument covers. These instrument wraps cannot be recycled and account for19% of trash produced by operating rooms in the U.S. The wraps are sewn together and given to homeless members in Montgomery County who use them to cover their belongings or for shelter because they are waterproof and durable. Over 100 blankets have been made so far. Spread the Warmth can always use more thread, needles, and manpower to continue the project. To get more information, please contact Carrie at carrie.minard@gmail.com.
Kristie Broberg, a clinical research nurse in medical oncology, has been actively volunteering at the Frederick News-Post Community Garden. The garden donates produce to the Frederick Food Security Network out of Hood College. The college collects produce from five local community gardens and donates it to the Housing Authority of Frederick County and the Community Action Agency. Last year, from April through mid-July, they had over 50 volunteers donate 1,035 hours to the garden. The volunteer work included activities like creating garden beds, planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting produce. The garden has grown and harvested over 600 pounds of beans, garlic, onion, zucchini, swiss chard, beets, hot/sweet peppers, cucumbers, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, radishes, and turnips by July.
They harvest summer squash, melons, tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, rutabaga, eggplant, tomatillo, potatoes, leeks, kohlrabi, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, winter squash, and a variety of herbs later in the summer. Imagine the Instagram photos, right!?
The purpose of the NWC is to cultivate a culture of wellness, collaborate with the Clinical Center Nursing Department (CCND) to identify health and wellness needs, provide a forum for individual wellness initiatives to be developed, and identify new wellness opportunities for the CCND staff. For more information about the NWC, please contact Michelle van der Merwe or Elena Fontan at michelle.fleming@nih.gov and elena.fontan@nih.gov.
