Sensory toys comfort Cranberry EMS patients
CRANBERRY TWP — More than 100 sensory items have been donated to township EMS as part of its sensory bag project.
“The goal is to provide distraction and comfort,” said Mandy Cousin’s, Cranberry Township EMS outreach coordinator.
Sensory items appeal to the five senses of a patient in an effort to calm or soothe them.
“Specifically, we were thinking toward the neurodivergent children or adults,” Cousins said. “Being in an ambulance is a very scary or different and unexpected thing. Anything we can do to help with keeping them a little calmer — that calm can help with our care, because it allows us to communicate with them better.”
Every toy and object in the colorful collection serves a purpose. Each one plays an important role for health care providers.
“We have earmuffs for people who have sensitivity to sounds, there are visual stimuli with some of the toys, there’s noise stimuli, there’s texture,” Cousins said. “You kind of have to have all of them because each person responds a little differently to their needs.”
The project aims to sort these items into sensory kits for each ambulance.
“We’ll have one bag per ambulance: four total and one spare,” said Nicole Dambaugh, the group’s pediatric emergency care coordinator. “Then we’ll have the ability to replace the bags in those ambulances 10 total times.”
Dambaugh manages the pediatric education and training of providers in the organization.
“My job is basically to make them feel comfortable with tiny humans,” she said. “It’s not a call that anybody ever wants to have, so if I can make it easier and they’re like, ‘You know what, I got this,’ that’s my job — making people comfortable.”
The idea for the Sensory Bag project came to Dambaugh after answering a series of calls for a child with autism.
“It was something like, ‘How do I make him feel more comfortable in my ambulance?’” she said. “Our job is basically that we sit around and wait for somebody to have the worst day of their life, so what can we do to make this experience a little bit easier and better?”
The project began in early fall with an open call for items on Facebook. The organization linked an Amazon wish list with items they needed for each bag.
“We knew what we wanted, and that way people could just donate a single item or something like that,” Cousins said. “That’s where they found out what we were looking for.”
The list was made in cooperation with Parents in Toto, a community center in Zelienople that works with neurodivergent children and adults.
“We’ve had a working relationship with them for the past couple of years,” Cousins said. “We reached out to them to see what their suggestions were.”
While many donations came from the Amazon wish list, the organization also received items from local organizations and businesses.
“We have donations from a dental office,” Cousins said. “The chief of the fire department decided to kick in a box of stuff, which was very nice because we’re two very separate entities.”
Cousins and Dambaugh are in the process of sorting and bagging the various items. The bags will be stocked with items that satisfy a series of criteria.
“Each bag will be set up with the ‘same-ish’ contents,” Cousins said. “We’ll actually have a checklist to go through and make sure it has what it needs.”
Once the bags are in service, Dambaugh will organize an in-service training day on them for staff. It will then be up to each first responder to use them appropriately.
The bags are for use with children, neurodivergent patients, anxious parents and the elderly. Cousins and Dambaugh have also made sure that most of the items are easily replaceable.
“For most of the objects, we have them so that they can also be taken with the person to the hospital,” Cousins said. “We don’t have to take them back afterward — most of the objects are things we can actually gift them.”
While the project has stockpiled enough items to begin working with the bags, items will need to be replenished from time to time.
“The Amazon list is still up on our Facebook,” Cousins said. “We have enough right now to start our process — to put them into service — if we do use them, though, we’re always going to be looking for more.”
The organization plans to continue expanding its pediatric initiatives and hopes that this effort will provide more personalized care for patients.
“We’re very grateful for all the donations that we got, and we’re grateful to all our community members that have helped us with the project and every project that we do,” Cousins said.
