Colorful chalk drawings lined the employee’s entrance of St. Mary’s Hospital, thanking to health care providers for their work.
Several Capital City High School students and their teacher drew different hospital-related pictures and calligraphic thank you messages at the entrance on Monday morning, helping to start off this year’s Health Care Week.
Celebrated nationally, the weeklong event ends Saturday. The theme this year is “All you do shines through.”
“So many different professions within health care have their own week, so Health Care Week is really a time for us to just celebrate anyone and everyone who works in health care,” said Janet Wear-Enloe, director of business development and marketing at SSM Health, which oversees St. Mary’s Hospital.
Abriana Brindisi, one of the students chalking, drew pill jars, a little cross and emojis with masks on. She hoped her art would “bring (a) smile to people’s day,” she said.
Wear-Enloe said CCHS students had created chalk art for the hospital last year and “everybody was blown away” by the drawings, so the hospital invited them again this year the hospital week celebration.
“They came over and uplifted the spirit of our staff, letting them know they are appreciated,” she said.
Apart from chalk art, the hospital planned a host of events throughout the week. There is going to be trivia competition today, three virtual town halls with Laura Kaiser, president of SSM Health, today and Wednesday, an afternoon and evening barbecue Wednesday, lunchtime music performances and a celebration of Florence Nightingale’s birthday on Thursday and a movie night for employees and their families on Friday.
Different sessions of the same event are being held so that employees working different shifts can participate, Wear-Enloe said.
Throughout Monday, three chaplains would go around the hospital and pray over the hands of individual employees who would like to receive Blessing of Hands, chaplain Bobby Reed said, where the chaplains would pray for the recipients’ hands and blessings in their lives.
On Friday, the chaplains will go out to all the clinics under SSM Health in Mid-Missouri to offer the same blessing to workers at those locations, he added.
The theme, “All you do shines through,” is decided by a committee made up of people from all the ministries under SSM Health, Wear-Enloe said.
“We really like the idea of using a star, because we feel like so much of what people do is their own love shining through, their commitment to patients shining through,” she said.
While this theme is used for all health care facilities under SSM Health, each hospital has a committee to organize specific activities for the week. For St. Mary’s Hospital, staff members can take selfies at a booth with stars as its backdrop, while all materials related to the week bear the theme, she added.
Across town, Capital Region Medical Center is also celebrating this week as Hospital Week, which is the name used by the American Hospital Association. Under the theme of “We are health care,” CRMC is holding events such as a T-shirt sale, bingo games, an employee lunch on Wednesday and a social hour on Friday.
Proceeds from the T-shirt sale are going to CRMC’s foundation to support the hospital’s cardiac program, spokesperson Emily Mantle said.
Juie Smith/News Tribune photo: As is part of Health Care Week tradition, Chaplain David Tolliver performed a blessing of the hands for Kathleen Ochs, left, and Keerstin Price, both of whom are registered nurses in the Progressive Care Unit at St. Mary’s Hospital.
Julie Smith/News Tribune Remi Taniguchi refers to an illustration on her cell phone Monday that she is trying to replicate in chalk on the floor of the employee entrance at St. Mary’s Hospital. As part of Health Care Week activities, St. Mary’s invited art students from Capital City High School to make chalk drawings in the employee entrance. Taniguchi is an exchange student from Japan and thought the idea of drawing on the floor with chalk was a “really cool” idea.
Julile Smith/News Tribune photo: Capital City High School senior Abriana Brindisi does a final inspection of her work Monday morning before returning to school. She and three other art class students spent over an hour sketching out and filling in images as encouragement for St. Mary’s Hospital staff who enter through the employee entrance in the lower level. 
Juie Smith/News Tribune photo: As is part of Health Care Week tradition, Chaplain David Tolliver performed a blessing of the hands for Kathleen Ochs, left, and Keerstin Price, both of whom are registered nurses in the Progressive Care Unit at St. Mary’s Hospital in Jefferson City. Ochs previously worked at St. Mary’s and returned in November while Price started a month ago. This was the first blessing of hands for either of them.
