Each year, Sheridan Memorial Hospital (SMH) employees find ways to give back to the community.
“Our community is so supportive of the hospital. Each hospital staff member works hard caring for the community in their routine job tasks. I am humbled to learn about the efforts made by our staff to help others outside of their normal job duties. I am so proud to share this year’s contributions with our community,” according to Cody Sinclair, SMH Chief Development Officer.
Here are some of the various efforts that hospital staff and departments participated in or initiated this past year.
SMH Foundation Employee Partner Program – 518 employee partners raised $40,781 in 2022. After an opportunity to select a project at the Annual Partner Celebration in December, Partners voted to support the hospital’s GAP Program Fund, which provides one-time assistance to patients for things like hotel rooms, meals, gas cards, and more – helping to ensure a successful patient recovery and/or safe discharge from the hospital. Over the past 19 years, SMH Employee Partners have contributed nearly $600,000 to a variety of significant patient care improvement projects at our community hospital.
Patient Access and Admissions Department – collected food prior to Thanksgiving for the Salvation Army shelves for their annual Harvest Food Drive.
Intensive Care Unit staff – came together and donated several gifts and made a cash donation to a single mother of 3 young girls who was going through a hard time this season.
Women’s Health Department – conducted a toy drive for Christmas, and toys were donated to Toys for Tots.
Addiction and Internal Medicine Clinic – Spearheaded the “Santa Kids” project, where SMH employees provided gifts for 55 children (ages baby to 17) of patients in the Addiction and Internal Medicine Clinic for Christmas. Each child sponsored was given a large gift bag of presents. The outpouring of support for this project was amazing and the families were so appreciative.
All SMH Employees – Specific Fridays throughout the year are designated as “Jeans Friday” at SMH. Employees are encouraged to donate $5 for the privilege of wearing jeans on that day; over $1,680 was raised from this effort. The funds were distributed among the following causes:
- The Link Partners in Pink – for comfort and care for Welch Cancer Center patients and families
- The hospital’s Gap Program
- Sheridan Media Christmas Wish Campaign
- Salvation Army
SMH Kozy Korner Gift Shop Volunteers — As part of their annual “Gifts of Kindness” project, our wonderful volunteers gave out 30 neck pillows to patients who were in the hospital on Christmas Eve along with a few special baby gifts to new parents and babies in Women’s Health.
Human Resources and Nurses — on several occasions throughout the year Human Resources and several SMH nurses have supported High School juniors and seniors from Sheridan, Big Horn and Tongue River by conducting mock employment interviews and HR-related roundtable discussions in preparation for their careers of interest.
Urgent Care – Staff chose to do special things for the Wyoming Girls School students on holidays throughout the year. Cash donations from the staff at Urgent Care went to these gifts for the girls: Candy “Poppers” on the 4th of July, handmade bunnies with treats for Easter, bookmarkers with treats for Back to School, witches brooms for Halloween and at Chrismas purchased stockings and stuffed them with goodies. These are only some of the treats and gifts that were given over the year.
SMH Trauma Program – The group gave away 204 life jackets, 240 bike helmets, over 50 Clifford pedestrian safety books, and 200 reflective bags with bracelets to children at 3rd Thursdays last summer. The giveaways had a huge impact in promoting safety in our community. The SMH Foundation assisted in obtaining all of these safety items.
Primary Scare – SMH Trauma and our Primary Care clinic held Primary Scare at the Gould Street location just before Halloween and gave trick-or-treaters safety swag and treats.
Welch Cancer Center – the Cancer Resource Center gave out wigs and other items free of charge to local people battling cancer.
Internal Medicine staff and providers – collected and gave a cash donation to the HUB in December.