Nurses clown around for health and nutrition
Tips From the Field
Nurses clown around for health and nutrition
Sometimes it helps to have a little fun when teaching staff or patients. At Valdese (NC) General Hospital Home Care, nurses even wear clown faces while teaching patients, thanks to a program called "Clowning Around for Nutrition/ Health." This innovative program was developed by Bonnie King, MS, RN, director of home care at the nonprofit, hospital-based agency that serves parts of western North Carolina.
King taught her staff how to make patient education more entertaining in hopes that patients will remember educational material more easily. She has observed that patients often remember funny things they see on television, but when it comes to repeating what a nurse has taught them, they come up dry. "So if you can put in some connection to humor and get them to smile or laugh, they’ll remember it longer," she says. "I like finding different ways to get people to think about education. So I thought we could teach patients about nutrition and make it fun without offending them. It’s easier for people to remember what’s on Wheel of Fortune’ than what we teach them."
King began her mission to combine education with healthy doses of laughter by buying some red balls in the pet section of a local discount store and turning them into clown noses. She cut holes in them and strung elastic through the holes. Then she had nurses cover their faces with white grease paint and paint on a big smile with red lipstick.
Everyone readily joined in the costume fun, and some dressed in colorful floppy shirts or colored scrubs, King says. "I’ve been blessed with a great staff."
The patient enjoyed the game
Then she showed them how to prepare the nutrition teaching materials for demonstrating a food pyramid and exercises. Here’s what she did:
• Food pyramid: Take a piece of scrap cardboard and punch holes in it. Then blow up multi-colored balloons; each color will represent a type of food. For example, a red balloon could mean an apple; a green balloon could indicate broccoli; and white and light brown balloons could represent bread and cereals.
Next, use draw a pyramid on the cardboard and write the names of the food groups. Fasten the balloons to the pyramid according to how many servings of each type of food should be eaten each day. For example, fasten four balloons in the category for fruits and vegetables.
Then, have a nurse take the balloon pyramid into patients’ homes and explain how it works. The nurse asks patients what they ate in the last 24 hours and pops a balloon that corresponds with that food group. So if a patient ate two helpings of fruit and one vegetable, then the nurse pops three balloons in the fruits and vegetables food group.
But if a patient ate three desserts, the nurse adds balloons to the pyramid’s oils and sweets category to show that the patient has eaten too many servings in that food group. Patients with a healthy diet will have all of their balloons popped.
Patients enjoy this approach. "Some of the patients had tears in their eyes because they just loved it," King says.
• Exercise examples: The agency created what King jokingly calls an "interactive toothpick video" to show patients how to exercise their legs and arms. Staff made six stick figures by breaking toothpicks in half and taping them together on a piece of heavy paper. Each figure shows a different leg or arm exercise; one shows how far to bend the knees, for example. The aide checks off the exercises and repetitions the patient has completed, using a chart the therapists put next to the stick figures, King says.
• Sticker reminders: The agency uses solid-color stickers and stars for medication reminders. "We put those on baggies," King says.
The star stickers indicate medications patients should put beside their beds and take at night, and the round or sun stickers indicate daytime medications.
"Everyone is real quick to grab a pill planner for elderly patients, but those things are hard to open, and someone has to put their medications in there," King says. The baggies are easier, she says, because they can be kept in places where patients can find them easily, such as beside the toothbrush for morning pills.
The agency also uses stickers to show which foods patients should eat and which they should not. So if a patient has hypertension, and the physician has placed the patient on a low-sodium diet, the red "stop" sticker would be placed on bags of chips and other high-sodium foods. The green "go" sticker would be placed on the healthy foods.
sources
• Bonnie King, MS, RN, Director of Home Care, Valdese General Hospital Home Care, P.O. Box 700, Valdese, NC 28690. Phone: (828) 879-7670. Fax: (828) 879-7623. E-mail: [email protected].
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