Phase I: Motivation & Creating Health Awareness

1. Developing ownership of the idea of improvement for student and house officer volunteers.

a)    “PDNE Orientation” (displayed to thousands of students, house officers, residents and nurses over the past 2 years) session, which motivates the people to be positive, be creative, think outside the box and have a will to participate in the development of their community. Developing ownership of the idea of improvement.

b)     “Vision” session (displayed to thousands of students, house officers, residents and nurses over the past 2 years): involved having the volunteers feel that their personal vision must include volunteerism.c)     “Vision” workshop (displayed to about 300 students and house officers volunteering in our activities in 8/2/2007 and in the summer of 2007) where small groups of volunteers “recreated” our vision of volunteerism.d)    Brainstorming sessions and planning sessions with the volunteers (End of 2006, 8/2007 and 5/2/2008) so that the volunteers would own the idea. 

2. Developing ownership of the idea of improvement for nurses.

Spreading awareness inside the hospital about the need for general improvement of quality and how to achieve that by a "communication workshop" in which the about 150 volunteers were spread all over the hospital to talk to the nurses. During this workshop, most of the nurses in the hospital were involved in brainstorming sessions with the title “What is the problem?" through which nurses in small groups perceived the factors that prevent us from providing high quality service especially in terms of infection control. Video shots were captured displaying nurse participation.

3. Creating health awareness to all medical staff using:

a)    2 Dream Day campaigns (25/6/2006 and 31/7/2006): About 60 and 120 participants respectively were involved in real life application of some health education, infection control and anti-smoking standards in all of the hospital in an almost perfect “dream” way, with the motto: “If we can do it for a day, we can do it everyday”.

b)    Video presentations and scenarios of wrong practices as well as corrective actions were captured (displayed to thousands of students, house officers, residents and nurses over the past 2 years).c)     Moving groups of volunteers that directly taught nurses some correct infection control procedures.