Students Pay it Forward at Teddy Bear Clinic

On Jan. 29, Dignity Health’s St. Bernardine Medical Center and the Community Hospital of San Bernardino teamed up to host a teddy bear clinic at Holy Rosary Academy and Preschool in San Bernardino as part of The Great Kindness Challenge. The Great Kindness Challenge, which took place Jan. 22 through 29, is a nationwide annual movement that encourages children from kindergarten through high school to create cultures of kindness in their schools and surrounding communities through different acts of kindness. During the week, the children complete at least 50 acts of kindness. “This is our third year of being a presenting sponsor with our focus on 'Hello humankindness', being kind to our patients, (and) being kind to our community,” said Darryl VandenBosch, president of Dignity Health’s St. Bernardine Medical Center. “We wanted to get involved in our schools and do fun things like the teddy bear clinic and really promote human kindness in our community.” This year at Holy Rosary, Dignity Health focused on their project Hello humankindness and gave the kindergarteners and first graders that participated orange t-shirts to help promote kindness in their communities. Though this is Dignity Health’s third year participating in The Great Kindness Challenge, it has been an ongoing event for 10 years. First created by the non-profit organization Kids for Peace, the challenge encourages children not only to be kind to fellow students and teachers at school, but also to bring the kindness home with them. “Any time you tell kids or anybody else, ‘Don’t do something,’ it’s kind of the reverse,” said Linda McDonald, Inland Empire Market vice president of mission services at the Community Hospital of San Bernardino. “For us, instead of saying, ‘Don’t do things,’ we ask to be kind. It’s something we’re doing within Dignity Health and Hello humankindness and being kind to our patients, so we want to take that into our community and working with our kids.” McDonald said when kindness is shown to patients in their hospitals, they get better faster. “That’s why being kind matters,” she said. As part of The Great Kindness Challenge, Dignity Health Southern California collaborated with over 120 schools and 86,000 students to perform acts of kindness in their communities. Nationwide, almost 6,000 schools and six million children are involved, according to VandenBosch. “People really want to get behind it because it’s really that idea of paying it forward,” he said. “If you’re kind to others, treat people the way you want to be treated, not necessarily in return for something but just because it’s the right thing to do.” For Holy Rosary’s teddy bear clinic, Dignity Health brought on Dr. Nadine Lyseight, an obstetrician at St. Bernardine Medical Center. She first talked to the children about what she does at her job, and then gave visiting teddy bear patient Diego a check-up before all the children received their own teddy bears to bandage up and take care of. “Every day, I find a way to show someone kindness,” Lyseight said. “It makes them feel happy, and that’s what I aim to do. I want my patients to be happy. In different ways, I try to make them happy, to make them feel loved.” McDonald explained that employees at St. Bernardine Medical Center and the Community Hospital of San Bernardino are encouraged to do acts of kindness. Lyseight does this by remembering details about her patients’ lives, giving them hugs or just simply talking to them. “The more employees that we can get out into the community to do this, it’s a ripple effect, if we can keep spreading the word,” McDonald said. The children at Holy Rosary were also able to write get well cards for the patients at the hospitals during the teddy bear clinic. VandenBosch said Dignity Health has other ways of reaching out, other than the teddy bear clinics. In the past, they have also held kindness art shows for older children, and in the future have events such as kindness walks and a kindness champions interview series planned. Sister Kathleen Daly, a volunteer in spiritual care at St. Bernardine Medical Center, has worked for Dignity Health for the past seven years and is on her second year of volunteering with The Great Kindness Challenge events. She said she plans to continue volunteering for these events in the future. “It is truly a wonderful experience to see children,” she said. “They light up the place.” Cheryll Austin, principal at Holy Rosary Academy and Preschool, mentioned that in the future, she would like to have Dignity Health come back and work with the kids again. “They love this week, especially the little ones,” she said. “They’re really impressionable, so we need to start young.”