OP Regional nurses spread Christmas cheer

Nurses at Overland Park Regional Medical Center helped light up the holiday season for several families.

Units in the hospital adopted families for Christmas through the Child Abuse Protection Agency.

Nurses and other staff members purchased gifts for the family members and decorated a Christmas tree for their adopted family.

“It definitely brought the unit together,” Jennifer Bray, RN, said. “It’s a wonderful thing to be able to affect a family in need.”

Bray works in the ortho/neuro unit. Her unit joined forces with a med/surge and telemetry unit to adopt an 11-member family.

“Our three units tend to work very closely,” said Debbie Brunkhorst, director of telemetry.

The blended family these units adopted included a mother and father with nine children who range in age from 2 months to 18 years.

Brunkhorst said she enjoyed the opportunity to give.

“It brings forth what the real meanings of the holiday are,” she said.

Med/surge charge nurse Erica Blades, RN, BSN, said the project brought nurses together in a way their day-to-day job does not.

“It’s fun to get together for a different type of thing,” Blades said.

This year, the down economy brought tough times to those who might not have struggled in the past.

“Everyone knows someone who’s been touched by it,” Med/Surge Director Rob McEver, RN, BSN, MSN, said.

This marked the first year for McEver’s unit to adopt a family.

“It was fun,” he said.

Bray admits that the units had to negotiate who purchased gifts for the younger children. She said the adopted family gave people without young children the chance to buy gifts for little ones.

“That’s why everyone was fighting over the baby,” she said.

The Child Abuse Protection Agency will deliver the gifts to the families adopted through the organization. Each family will also receive an artificial tree with ornaments donated by the unit that adopted them.

The units decorated their trees with the ornaments they donated for a hospital-wide tree decorating contest. This was the first year the hospital has sponsored the tree decorating contest.

McEver said departments became pretty competitive about the tree decorating, but it all went to a good cause.

Overall, the nurses who gave to the adopted families said they enjoyed the process and they encouraged more nurses to participate.

“The more you give the more someone else wants to give,” Brunkhorst said.

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