TEMPLE, Texas — According to Baylor Scott & White, McLane Children’s Medical Center receives 30,000 patients via emergency services per year, and more than 3,000 visits in the outpatient clinic each year. With a recent expansion, those numbers have increased.
Social workers at the hospital have particularly seen an increase in children coming into their trauma department amid the pandemic.
New staff member Gigi the facility dog is here to help lighten their load. Gigi is the new kid on the block at McLane Children’s Medical Center in Temple.
She is navigating the halls side by side the hospital’s first service dog Lorenzo. Lorenzo opened the door for pups like them three years ago. He supports child life specialist Leah Woodward.
“So I use Lorenzo for up on the bed for distraction during procedures, like IV starts, stitches anything like that, and then we also work closely with PT and OT,” said Woodward.
However, Gigi’s job is a bit different.
Engaging with kids can sometimes be tough for social workers like Laura Ingram and Rebecca Holmstrom. They would often ask to borrow Lorenzo to help comfort their patients. That sparked the idea for the social workers to get a dog as well. Gigi stepped up to give them a helping hand, well more like a helping paw.
“We usually bring Gigi in first to kind of get them [patients] more relaxed, more comfortable with me and the nurses. So that’s really made a world of a difference in terms of them getting to open up," said Holmstrom, child protection team social worker.
Gigi works with children who have endured some sort of trauma.
“Kids are experiencing you know a lot more mental health issues because of the pandemic and it was already kind of rising before COVID started anyway," said Holmstrom. "So I think having her [Gigi] here, you know with COVID, and seeing more mental health patients has really helped.”
Gigi has pretty much spent her entire life training for this very moment with the goal of providing therapeutic support and a sense of security for kids at the hospital.
“She helps them feel safe and she helps us build rapport with these kids because we’re asking them to trust us and we’re asking them to feel safe with us. So she helps with that,” said Ingram, emergency department social worker.