We Kid You Not…St Joe’s Brings in Therapy Goats to Reduce Stress Among Caregivers
[Photos and video by Ryan Hutson]
Nurses and staff from various departments at the hospital had an opportunity to cuddle and play with four baby goats, amidst their otherwise demanding and often high-intensity work environment. Courtesy of Francis Creek Ranch in Ferndale, four baby goats came to play with hospital staff providing therapeutic relief for the caregivers.
Staff were initially curious and then visibly amused and pleased by the furry visitors, who were only a matter of days old. The baby goat therapy session was set up inside an available conference room and hospital staff took turns coming in to meet and greet the kids.
Carmel and Oreo
Two pairs of twins, each a boy and a girl, were on site to enjoy the attention of hospital staff members. Nine day old brother and sister Oreo and Caramel were more active than the second pair of baby goats, just two days old. Between being held in calming sessions, Oreo and Caramel took turns being rambunctious within a small baby goat corral set up in the center of the room, while medical staff enjoyed cradling the younger goats which were more docile.
The hospital staff at St. Joes have been pressed throughout the pandemic to maintain the best possible standards of care for patients in an already stressed setting, worsened by challenges brought on by COVID-19. Most healthcare workers and caregivers in the time of COVID-19 would say they have never had a more stressful time period in their careers than their time spent working as a healthcare professional during the pandemic of the last two years.
Volunteer nurse gets a goat break.
The pressure of the pandemic and the already demanding nature of caregiving has been difficult to cope with for a rural hospital network such as Providence in Humboldt County, which had a pre-existing shortage of staff in general, and has grappled with how to not only maintain ideal staffing levels, but how to keep existing staff under such stressful conditions.
CEO Roberto Luskin-Hawk was available for a goat-photo op, and reiterated that the new baby goat therapy is simply the newest, and perhaps most innovative way that administration has tried to address the possible fatigue and stress buildup among employees. Virtual therapy apps, guided meditations, yoga, and religious support services are some of the therapy options already available to staff that may be having a hard time with stress management at work.
Galloping Goat Therapy Gallery:
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In a hospital?
Butt, butt, butt..
You must be kidding, right?
E-Coli anyone?
Goats are filthy.
Job security I guess.
Maybe hire more staff?
More staff would be preferable to more E-Coli, or is that just me?
Call me Negative Nelly, I don’t care.
Seems ill advised to me that’s all.
also creepy/satan worship-ish imho… Very odd…. But then again we all took a shot because some creepy unelected globalist said:
“TAKE Xi INJECTIONS!”
They are not in with patients. The hospital has separate building and offices for meetings and such. This is where this is. I agree we need to higher more but mental health of current staff is important too
“The hospital has separate building and offices for meetings and such.”
WRONG.
Every week, multiple times a week even, we gather in meeting rooms next to patient rooms, across the hall from patient rooms, between patient rooms.
Get the picture?
Are the goats vaccinated? I don’t see them wearing masks. If people can’t go in like that, why animals. It’s like the grocery stores……. I’m supposed to use hand sanitizer with unknown mixtures of chemicals in them that absorb through my skin and wear ineffective fabrics over my breathing orifices but the same weak minded people pushing vaccines and masks on people bring their ’emotional support animals’ with them into the damn grocery stores but look at me like my kids is some kind of problem and spreading diseases. My little ‘kid’ (not a goat) wears shoes, doesn’t generally touch the floor in addition to every other surface, does not run up to other people or animals and jam their nose in their butt, and don’t go sniffing and licking hands and faces and food constantly and spreading saliva and mucus and hair and dirt anywhere near as much as a dog. Goats might actually be cleaner though so I’m looking forward to getting a ‘kid’ (baby goat) and bringing it to the produce aisle with me. This country is all mixed up. Why can’t the goats get vaccinated with the Rona Vaxx like they are doing at the Toronto zoo like I read today in a news article. Those Canadians know how to run a zoo properly.
Well, isn’t that swell!
On the other hand, Roberta Luskin Hawk, you could reduce stress a lot if you treated your staff with respect and dignity, stopped lying about everything, quit putting profits above patient care and service, and maintained a full staff of trained, licensed, competent and permanent persons, and paid a competitive salary adequate to retain full-time staff…
Goats in a hospital… Yikes… Incredibly stupid!
Your employees are sheep, and you treat them like farmworkers. I get it…
St Joseph’s is not a decent place to be sick, it’s a lousy employer, and, I will never forgive what happened to me at Redwood Hospital… Seeing these folks in their masks and blue gowns and face-shields and all the rest makes me sick, and,
VERY unlikely to come back to work in healthcare any time soon, and the “goat experience” is an interesting insult to the intelligence and service of what few actual full time employees you do have…
Enjoy your time in lotus-land, travelers…
This is just so hygienic!
OH yes, goat babies are great therapy. Outdoors.
Better therapy for stressed out employees:
25% pay increase.
25% more staff…
And administrators who value patient care over “photo ops”…
Sad, Providence, just sad…
Raised goats for 30+ years. Incredibly intelligent species, those caprines. This is good start. I see sparkling eyes all around. I think the commentors who poo-pooed the idea, need a visit from a room full of kids.
Spend a day in the shoes of a hospital worker and you might have a better understanding of why people might not be so enthusiastic about goats.
Don’t get me wrong, I love goats, and would happily spend hours with them. But it’s insulting to think that the best Providence, a multi- BILLION dollar non-profit corporation, can do for their healthcare “heroes” is a petting zoo. Our healthcare workers are exhausted, overworked, constantly being put in dangerous situations, understaffed, underpaid, all while their personal insurance costs go up, time off is denied (due to short staffing), and suffering covid outbreaks.
The criticism isn’t about the goats, it’s directed at our incredibly poorly managed hospital and healthcare system all in the name of profit. If healthcare workers had the confidence that they were providing the best care possible and patients were prioritized over profit, I’m sure there would be a lot more celebrating of baby goats.
Never heard of such a thing. Could help I suppose, but young kid tacos are delicious, and may help these patients even more with a nutritious meal.
Give a shit about your goats, how about y’all focus on your maternity ward. Never forgive you fortuna for being so greedy with your donations, ruthless to your employees and downright neglectful towards the future generations.
It’s all good until they discover the glorious sound it makes when they jump up and down on the hood of your car. Keep them out of the parking lot. I’m not kidding.
lol. probably can’t be described with words
Are you kidding me? I’m with permanently on monitoring. This is an insult to me because those goats are not going to change the incompetence at Eureka PROVIDENCE ER room that cost my loved one their life.
My loved one was taken by ambulance to fortuna PROVIDENCE in the middle of a cardiac event. Due to Covid protocols I was shut out on everything, and my loved one wasn’t even told what was happening to them. Fortuna did a good job and made contact to transport, and have a ICU bed ready and available for them out of the area. Contact was made so they transported them Eureka PROVIDENCE, and there they let them lay all night into the next day on a gurney in the ER, through a shift change. Then Marika C. Ennis MD “assumed care at the change of shift. Briefly this is a person transferred from Redwood Memorial Hospital for MRI brain. Patient was initially seen at Redwood Memorial Hospital for AMS. Antibiotics initiated and patient now at baseline. MRI brain pending. If MRI brain is not consistent with stroke, plan to discharge patient with Azithromycin secondary to pneumonia shown on chest x-ray. MRI brain shows no acute abnormalities. Patient will be discharged home with the written cefdinir, and azithromycin for community acquired pneumonia as planned by Dr. Hickey. Patient instructed to follow up with primary care physician within 2 to 3 days.”
They then called me to pick them up because they were being discharged. I explained that there must be a mistake? They were treating them for cardiac problems, the Dr. then told me “we don’t do cardiac problems in the ER, I quickly responded, “ that’s why they have an upstairs.” They were persistent to ask if I was going to pick them up because they are discharged? Of course I complied. As the nurse was rolling my loved one out in a wheelchair because they were unable to walk they were so sick. I told the nurse “there’s been a big mistake here. She said, hey we’re in the day of Covid, if your walking, and talking your being released.”
All this time nobody shared any of this information and plan with my loved one or me. I took my loved one to their primary care physician that tried but could never get the information on the medical problems they were having at PROVIDENCE. Of course my loved one ended up back 911at Eureka PROVIDENCE where they laid for 22 days in, and out of ICU on a ventilator. Never seeing a heart specialist.
I found this information out in our MY Charts the day before I had to unhook them from the ventilator, and let them die.
They treated my loved one like a farm animal that they were taking to slaughter.
No goat 🐐 could ever fix the disfunction, and lack of communication, and transparency that lives behind the doors in that hospital?
How does a Dr. forget that a person is in the middle of a transport out of the area to be placed into a ICU bed??
Of course PROVIDENCE is now turned into a bunch of bullies. Making my loved one lay at Ayers funeral home for weeks because they wouldn’t release the medical records that we signed and showed ID’s to in a records release form, with staff minutes before we had to remove them from the ventilator. They knew that those records were needed for the autopsy we were having done. We had to do the horrific deed that has impacted us and left us devastated for life.
Prior to the horrific deed, they were asking us to do. I asked the Dr.“ what was my loved was dying from? He said, they needed a non invasive heart surgery that we don’t do here.”
Duh, that’s why they were to be transported out of the area where they do this type of surgery.
So I can’t help but ask myself if the doctors could of held a goat would my loved got the healthcare they so deserved??
If so I’m contacting my friend Shannon @ Miranda’s rescue, and I’ll buy the whole farm we can set up in there so nobody else has to die like this!
Kidding me… as in like,a baby goat is called a kid?
Ya, but they can not purr.
All you negative Nellies need to realize that they are wearing the blue protective gear so that they can handle the goats and not contaminate their clothes.
The space can still get contaminated and is the air circulation stopped? Maybe a negative pressure environment with sanitizing exhaust? Goats in a hospital is absurd and why do the staff need to be comforted while at work? Maybe just give them and longer break or a extra hour off.
Not a baaaaad idea…
Poor goats. Being associated with Providence.
Schwarma is therapeutic.
I took my oldest daughter and my granddaughter to the Eureka zoo today where we walked on the skywalk and got to pet goats and brush their coats. It was awesome!
Great idea by St. Joe’s.
The Skywalk is lovely.
It is! And the zoo is great for kids of all ages! Best to get there at feeding time for the red pandas.
We have red pandas?? I gotta get to the zoo!