Travelling Road Show

What is the Travelling Road Show?
Benefits
Visiting a School
Activity Centres
Time & Cost
Book a Session

What is the “Travelling Road Show”?

The Travelling Road Show is an innovative program developed and presented by a team of volunteers at Southlake Regional Health Centre. It aims to:

• foster good relationships between the community and the hospital
• remove the ‘myth’ of the hospital as a scary and frightening place
• make the hospital familiar and friendly to children
• reduce anxieties and fears involving medical practices for young children 

This program brings the hospital experience into the Grade 1 classrooms of York Region and Simcoe County. This group has been specifically targeted because children within this age group are most likely to be admitted to the hospital for ear/nose/throat infections, tonsillectomies, broken bones, swallowing accidents, etc.

Benefits

In the aftermath of the SARS outbreak, Southlake is no longer able to offer tours for school groups. It has been deemed that the safest way to familiarize and introduce young children to the hospital experience is to have a team of volunteers take the ‘hospital’ to them. Also, the benefits of taking the Travelling Road Show to schools would:

• reduce the risk of students contracting or spreading infectious diseases;
• eliminate the dispensing and collecting of permission forms from parents and/or guardians;
• cut the cost of hiring school buses to transport the children to the hospital; and
• reduce the time spent outside of the classroom.

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Visiting a School

Each session or school visit by the team of volunteers lasts approximately 90 minutes. Volunteers arrive on the day of the visit with ‘real’ medical equipment which they will share with the children and explain their specific uses.  The visit begins with a 15-minute ‘warm-up’ introduction where the children are asked several questions within the format of a guessing game, such as:

• Does anybody recognize the blue ‘H’ sign?
• What number do you call in an emergency (when you need help urgently)?
• When you dial 911, who responds to your call?
• Do you know how many babies are born daily at Southlake?

Children are then divided into three activity groups and each group is given the opportunity to handle medical equipment, including a stethoscope, blood pressure cuffs, etc., and role play as a doctor, nurse, and patient.

Note:  In order to ensure that each child has the chance to handle various equipment, the maximum number of children during each visit is limited to 25.

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Activity Centres

In order to introduce real-life situations that children would encounter in a hospital, the volunteers of the Travelling Road Show have developed activities as part of their presentation. This is in keeping with the Ontario Ministry of Education’s goals for the Grade 1 which states:

“Healthy active living involves a combination of physical activity and appropriate lifestyle choices. Students should begin early on to acquire basic knowledge about a wide variety of health-related topics and to develop relevant skills. They need to understand how their actions and decisions affect their health, fitness, and personal well-being, and how to apply their learning to make positive, healthy decisions in all areas of life and personal development. The school environment can profoundly influence students’ attitudes, preferences and behaviours. A comprehensive approach to health and physical education emphasizes the shared responsibility of parents, peers, schools, health-care systems, government, the media, and a variety of other institutions and agencies. Meaningful health and physical education also requires safe, health-promoting environments, support services from the community, and a school curriculum that makes health a priority in the school.”

• Activity Centre 1
  Children are shown authentic X-rays taken of victims with broken bones and items that have been swallowed accidentally. The volunteers will then discuss some safety measures while presenting the various X-rays.

• Activity Centre 2
  Children will learn to place a cast on a doll’s arm or leg, use slings, weights, and other rehabilitation equipment. This will be a ‘hands on’ centre.

• Activity Centre 3
  Children are given the opportunity to pretend they are in a surgical environment by dressing up in gowns, masks, and gloves, to use stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs, and role play as surgeons examining their patients or nurses doing a routine procedure, such as taking a patient’s temperature and blood pressure.

Children rotate around the centres and reconvene with the presenters to discuss what they have learned. Teachers are asked complete a brief evaluation form of the session. Volunteers provide each child with a booklet puzzles, games, and pertinent information about the hospital. Each child will also take away a small Southlake gift, such as a zipper pull, magnet, decal, bookmark, etc.

The Travelling Road Show helps to reduce the fears and anxieties of children. By familiarizing them with hospital procedures and medical instruments, children begin to recognize these items when visiting the hospital and are less afraid.
Southlake also runs You’re the Star, a surgical pre-admission program for pre-operative children to help prepare themselves and their parents for surgery by addressing their fears and helping to understand the process involved.

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Time & Cost

Each sessions runs approximately 90 minutes and costs $75.00, payable to Southlake Regional Health Centre.

Book a Session

To book a Travelling Road Show visit for your classroom, please contact Southlake Regional Health Centre’s Community Resources Department at (905) 895-4521, extension 2590.

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