Nurses at University of Louisville Hospital are taking the tenet of caring for others beyond the clinical setting.
Nursing Congress, the shared governance model for nursing practice at UofL Hospital, this week is having an organization-wide drive to collect new and gently-used clothes for adult patients in need once they are discharged from the hospital.
The clothing drive is part of UofL Hospital’s celebration of National Nurses Week and National Hospital Week, both coinciding May 6-12, 2018, and held annually around the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing.
“We felt we should do something to give back. That’s just what nurses do,” said Jordan Fentress, a nurse in the post-anesthesia care unit at UofL Hospital and chair of Nursing Congress. “Who better to give back to than our patients?”
Some patients may need new clothes after being involved in an accident. It’s not uncommon for trauma patients to have their clothes cut off while being treated in the emergency department.
“When this happens to homeless patients, that may have been their only shirt or pair of pants and then we have to send them off in paper scrubs,” said Marina Dubinchik, a nurse in the mixed acuity unit at UofL Hospital and co-chair of Nursing Congress. “Others may not have had adequate clothes when they arrived at the hospital.”
Practical clothes for patients leaving the hospital are being collected, including shirts, sweatpants, shoes, long johns, and new socks and undergarments.
The donations will be organized in the hospital’s care coordination office and will be available to staff to pull items as needed.
The hospital will continue to collect clothes year round and will focus on pieces in need, such as jackets during winter.
