Transcription:
Surgical Blankets for the Homeless

Melanie Cole (Host): Welcome. We’re talking today about how Lourdes OR team is repurposing surgical wraps to help the homeless. And my guests are Laura Faust, she’s a nurse anesthetist and Dana Scarangelli, she’s a surgical technician and they are both part of the OR team at Lourdes Health System. Dana, I’d like to start with you. Tell us about the typical surgical process for equipment that is used. What happens to it?

Dana Scarangelli (Guest): So, it’s processed down in Central Supply and it comes up in big blue wraps that are made out of number five polypropylene woven plastic and then we open them. We use them for a procedure and then they are tossed in the trash, the wrappers.

Host: So, they are typically thrown away. They have never done anything but been wrapped around sterilized equipment. So, then Laura, tell us about the initiative. How did this even come about? What did you guys think about when you started this?

Laura Faust (Guest): Well this is really Dana’s work. She got the idea from this wonderful surgical technician in California, Monica Virello and Dana saw this on I guess it was a surgical website. Correct me if I’m wrong Dana. But this was a girl who -

Dana: It was a magazine. It was AST Magazine.

Laura: And Dana, why don’t you go ahead and talk about that and you can tell everyone how you brought this to Lourdes and then I will add.

Dana: Okay. So, I was pushing – when our manager Anthony, he was in the Army on reserves and while he was gone, I kept pushing could we recycle, could we go green. Because I was working per diem in another operating room that was a complete and total green operating room. They recycled, upcycled, got rid of and reused everything. Which I thought was like awesome. Totally amazing. They had recycle bins, they had other bins for other things and it was just really cool. They had signs on things like turn lights off and just little tiny little things that make a difference in the end.

So, I was trying to push that in our operating room and Anthony was – Anthony our manager was like absolutely we can do this. so, one of the girls I work with gets – it’s called Association of Surgical Technologists Magazine and she sent me an article and it was about Veronica out in California who had started a project and it’s called the DécOR Project which means from the heart in French and then she capitalizes the O and the R so, it’s from the heart of the OR and she was making the mats all over in California and handing them out all over. And when I saw that, I contacted her, and I was like we could send you our blue wraps because we have so many that we use daily and she was like well how about you guys just start your own program out there. And that’s basically how it was – that’s how it basically started and then from there, Laura had seen me collecting them one day and she was like what are doing. And I was like – and I told her, and she was like I want to be part of this.

Laura: Yeah, it was – I saw that, and I thought wow, that’s something I can really get into. And I have to tell you, I’m not a sewer. The last time I used a sewing machine was in the fourth grade and I made a really bad tote bag. So, I asked my mom who sews a lot, to teach me how to use a sewing machine. So, she came over one weekend, taught me the basics of sewing and that’s how it all started. I just started sewing and making mats and it’s a hobby, but it’s going to be like a never-ending hobby. This will go on forever as long as we have surgical equipment, there will be these wraps and hundreds and hundreds of them that we have every week that just pile up.

So, it’s something that we can do for the community. Something that we can do for the homeless. We make mats out of them. We make sleeping bags out of them and we just kind of took off with this idea. And once we started making dozens of them, dozens turned into 50 to 100 to I think we have made over, correct me if I am wrong Dana, probably over maybe 200, 220, 250 mats.

Dana has been going to different areas and distributing them to homeless shelters. What I’ve been doing is I have a friend who is the Chief of the Pennsauken Police Department and he has been giving them out to the homeless population in the South Jersey area. I thought it is just such a great way for him and his patrol officers to have that – bridge that relationship from police officer to the homeless people. And so far, it’s been kind of taken off that way and right now we are trying to get involved with the Camden police department. There are also some homeless shelters in the area that we are getting in touch with.

And another way this has taken off as well, is we were interviewed by Action News and they did a really nice piece on us about a month ago. And it was broadcasted and one of my co-workers put it on a website which is a Facebook website for CRNAs in which we discuss different cases and just interesting topics. And he put this on the page and this Facebook website has about 25,000 members. So, you can imagine all the responses I got, and it’s really been overwhelming and really like amazing too. So, there – I have been getting emails from California, from Florida, from all over the United States wanting to start this type of program in this hospital. And this is all really because of Dana. Dana brought this here. I took off with it. She took off with it in her way and it’s kind of starting a – it’s a movement. So, we are pretty proud of it.

Host: Dana, how long does it take to make each blanket?

Dana: I’d say between 15 and 20 minutes. It’s really not hard at all.

Host: How many people are you involving? Are other providers in the OR getting involved and what do the physicians think of this?

Dana: The physicians are just now starting to talk about it, will talk to me about it and they are not really involved like where they want to help sew or distribute them, but they all think it’s like an amazing idea and that it’s a really awesome. We are a Catholic Health System. We promote giving back to the community and helping your fellow neighbor and stuff like that. So, everybody agrees that it’s a really awesome thing and I have so many people that I work with that want to help but they can’t sew, or they don’t have a sewing machine. So, in the first two weeks of February, we are just going to be distributing them in Camden with the police department. I tell people they can come with us. If you want to help, you can donate elastic. You can donate thread, or you can just go with us when we hand them out. I mean, the more the merrier.

Host: Well we sure could use some of those here in Chicago. How warm are they Laura? I mean if you say you are using them for sleeping bags and blankets. How are you sewing them together to make it so that they are warm?

Laura: Well, there’s different sizes. If you think about all the different types of surgical equipment. We have bigger equipment and smaller equipment, so there are different sized tarps. The bigger ones we sew together, and we make those into just the mats that the people can lay on. The fabric itself, isn’t necessarily warm, but it’s impermeable to water. It’s heat-resistant because if you think about how we sterilize the instruments; they have to go into an autoclave which is about 350 degrees to sterilize all the instruments. So, the material is extremely durable. So, when I make a sleeping bag out of it, it protects them from the elements. It will repel the rain. It will repel the wind which the hypothermia can kill people. So, it’s really more of like a repellant for all the harsh elements out there.

Host: That is amazing ladies. What do you want the community to know and Laura, I’m going to start with you and then Dana you’ll get the last word here, what do you want the community to know about this initiative? I think it’s just wonderful what you are doing and how you want them to get involved. So, Laura, why don’t you start?

Laura: Well already I can give you an example of how the community has gotten involved. A very nice woman who lives in a retirement community in Morristown called the Evergreen; she reached out to me and she said she has a sewing club that meets once a week and she read the article in the Currier Post about our group and she would love to get involved. So, I met with her about a month ago and I brought my bag full of tarps there and I showed her what the mats look like and she was super excited, and I actually just met her two days ago and I picked up about 20 or so mats that they had made. And I took a nice picture with them and I couldn’t be happier that the senior citizens there who have so much energy and so much enthusiasm for helping the less fortunate, came together and decided to do this for the community. They saw this out there and they reached out to me and wanted to help, and I think it’s pretty uplifting that everyone can help out in one way or another.

Host: What a sense of satisfaction, so rewarding. So, Dana, last word to you. What do you want the community and other health systems to know about what you are doing, why you started it, how easy it is and just really how anybody can get involved in this?

Dana: Well, I guess first I just wanted to tell you real quick that Veronica in California and I have actually kind of like joined forces and where she is called the décOR project, our project is now called just the English version of that From the Heart Project and we are on Facebook, if anybody wanted to get involved, they could join the page and talk to us and stuff like that.

And I have had hospitals in West Virginia, Dallas and Atlantic City who are getting ready to start their own programs making mats, which is really exciting. I just – there is so much waste, and I just wish people would – I wish that we could all find a way to reduce that waste because this is our planet. We need to be kind to it.

Laura: I’d like to add to Dana what she has to say. I have one public Facebook post under Laura Sweeney Faust and in that post, there is a video of Veronica and how to make those mats. And also, I give a little more detailed description of how to make it a little bit easier and how to make the sleeping bags. So, if listeners want to log on to that, and Laura Sweeney Faust post which is my one public Facebook post; they can learn how to do it and spread the word as well.

Host: That’s wonderful ladies. Thank you so much for all the great work that you are doing for the Lourdes community and beyond. It’s really – it’s very special and it shows that you care, and you are taking the time and you are also informing other hospital systems of how to do this and the word is definitely going to spread. Thank you so much for joining us today. This is Lourdes Health Talk. For more information, please visit www.lourdesnet.org, that’s www.lourdesnet.org. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for tuning in.