MADISON, Wis. – Two Evansville High School seniors are helping families with the smallest patients at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison.
Teagan Olson and Kaitlyn Sam delivered 20 care baskets filled with things like phone chargers, toothbrushes, water bottles and journals for their Senior Kindness project, inspired by their advisor’s experience in the neonatal intensive care unit.
“We knew it would help people and Stacey said when she was going through it like it meant a lot for her to get the stuff,” Olson said.
Olson and Sam fundraised and collected donations to make the baskets with feedback from the staff at the hospital.
For Registered Nurse Molly Joshua, their act of kindness hit especially close to home as she remembered when she had her own premature baby at St. Mary’s.
She said the care baskets will offer some much-needed comfort to the NICU families who are understandably overwhelmed. She explained parents are not always prepared with their own basic necessities and are often at a loss about what to do.
“If they have a gift a basket to welcome them in, fill their time a little bit–some self-care items, it’s really good for our families to get baskets like that” Joshua said. “They’re very touched by it.”
Staff at St. Mary’s said a basket will be given to every family currently in their NICU.
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