Lucienne Doho NYSP Experience!

Now that everything is over, I am missing the children. Looking back at my previous post, I couldn't see past the faults of the children. Looking back thinking of my experience with this National Youth Sports Program, I am realizing that i will never have such an opportunity to make an impact in a child's life, as i did for this one. At the begining of camp, because of being overwhelmed with the quantity of the children that was thrown at me, I came to only look at the naegative side of things, my first reaction was to mention that this sport program had absolutely nothing to do with nursing health. OH HOW I WAS WRONG! this program had everything and more to do with health. These children ages 10-16 year came in this sports program, leaving their home life and community life, and trusting their health in us. Education or what we called enrichment was one of my most enjoyable part of the experience. Not only did the kids confide in us, we had quite a few children that came to us asking for advise about family life, better eating habbits, anger/stress management, ways to avoid peer pressure, ect....We had a few instances where the children concerns needed to be followed up by a higher authority. during our enrichment about self-esteem, both positive and negative, we were able to evaluate on our effectiveness in teaching by giving the children pre and post surveys. we could see the growth in the children throughout our lessons, and their willingness to open up to us, which gave us encouragement. I was able to built strong and trusting relationship with a few of these kids, which made it difficult to part from them at the end of the program. I had a few kids who beg me to adopt or abduct them...either way they would be pleased. Sports activities, which i mostly did soccer, was enjoyable as well. since it was a sports program, it was important to emphasis to the kids that staying active is important to have not only a healthy weight, but also lower their blood pressure (which was present in some of the children) and also reduce the risk of developing diabetes. the children enjoy competing with one another and especially the staff crew. i took advantage of this opportunity to encourage them in participating in their sports activity. Overall, i learned a lot about myself. I not only learned about the African American culture in a more in dept way, i also learned patience and empathy. I was able to utilize my skills learned throughout my community clinical experience to help set goals for myself which were attained. i plan on being available to the campers next year if the opportunity comes my way. Although i do not plan on being a community nurse, i realize that the role a community nurse has a great impact on the patient's life.