Unfortunately, this week at Winship was cut short due to the destruction caused by Hurricane Irma. Thankfully, Winship itself was able to remain open with power, so those who needed to come in were able to. Experiencing Emory Hospital handle itself during a natural disaster was encouraging and powerful to witness. Every staff member rallied with each other in checking in to make sure everyone was safe, as well as ensuring that their patients were cared for. Wednesday was my first day back and it was full of catch-up work that I had missed during the storm. Many of the conference calls and meetings that we had planned for Monday and Tuesday had to be pushed back, and specifically in the Resource Center, we spent the day assisting patients and caregivers who were trying to organize their appointments after cancellations. It was a good learning experience that taught me to be flexible and think on my feet after dealing with an unplanned incident.
Outside of recovering after the hurricane, much of this week was used to officially gather our committee members for the Arts in Health Program. We already have a good amount of artist volunteers on our committee board, but we are currently in the process of hiring an art therapist, as well as introducing a group of Masters in Public Health students to the program. My job is to train the graduate students, answer any questions they have about the program, and assist them in collecting data for their research. The students sent me a logic model that they developed for the Arts in Health program and I edited it for them and made some corrections. Then, on Friday, we held a meeting with the students and more accurately defined their role in our program. For us, their job is to create a needs assessment for what our patients are looking for in an art program and develop an evaluation plan for how our “pilot” program has been going so far. Additionally, I have been working with two committee members to discuss an upcoming Arts in Health Open House geared towards attracting artists in the local community who are interested in volunteering for our program.
This portion of my internship has been focused on building an organized and stable base for the Arts in Health program to build off of so that it will be successful in the future.