Volunteer Opportunity: Help Make Doernbecher Trauma Dolls.
An example of a Kiwanis Trauma Doll
The Downtown Salem Kiwanis Club, as well as their recently created Keizer Kiwanis Club Satellite, is preparing to cut, stuff,and sew Trauma Dolls for Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. Naturally you might as, “What’s a Trauma Doll?’
Trauma Dolls are small plain white muslin dolls without even standard features like eyes, mouth or clothing.
To alleviate the fear and apprehension most kids have of hospitals, nurses use the dolls to explain treatments.
When a child requires an intravenous shot, nurses give a trauma doll the shot first. When a child needs an arm or leg cast, the nurses put a paper mini-cast on the doll.
With the dolls, kids get the feeling that they’re not the only ones who are traumatized, the doll is, too.
A pack of crayons is given to the children with each doll.
The kids are then encouraged to depict their injuries and feelings by coloring on the doll,
Coloring the dolls often acts as a sedative for the children, many of whom are frightened not only by their injuries but by the unfamiliar and threatening hospital environment.
A positive experience on a child’s first visit can really project to the future of their medical care.
The trauma dolls also make work easier for the nurses, who are often looked upon by children as the source of their boo-boos.
They’re rewarding to nurses who don’t like to be the ones inflicting pain all the time. The nurses become seen as healers.
The trauma doll concept was devised by a Kiwanis Club in Australia in 1993.
We need 5 to 10 people, armed with a pair of sharp scissors to come and help cut out the templates for this years trauma dolls. If you have sewing skills and would like to help sew the templates together, then those services would be welcomed as well. Additional meetings will be held to help stuff the dolls once they’re sewn together.
The next meeting for the Trauma Doll Assembly is going to be held October 8th, at the Town & Country Lanes on River Road in Keizer. The meeting will start at 6:30 and go until 7:30.
