Helping others and supporting the community
Oliver Castellanos started a clothing closet for the homeless at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Carey Acosta launched a program at Homestead Hospital to help prevent infant sleeprelated deaths. Rhonda Goodman leads missions to Guatemala where nursing students provide free medical care for indigenous people.
These three South Florida nurses dedicate their time and resources beyond their work shifts to help others and support the community.
CLOTHING THE NEEDY
Ten years ago, when he was a discharge nurse at Jackson Memorial Hospital, Castellanos saw many homeless patients being released in their hospital gowns because the clothes they came in wearing were in such bad shape or they didn’t have clothes at all.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to discharge a human being without the essentials?’ That’s just not right,” he says.
Castellanos, who has worked at Jackson Memorial for 31 years, started asking family, friends and co-workers for clothes they no longer needed and filling a bin in the corner of his office.
Today, the “homeless clothing closet” at Jackson’s Discharge lounge is a large walk-in space stocked with clothes, coats, shoes, hats, belts, walkers, reading glasses, backpacks, toiletries and more.
Castellanos said the feedback from patients has been humbling.
On one occasion, the closet provided a beautiful outfit for a poor woman discharged with an advanced-stage terminal illness. After she passed away, her family returned to thank Castellanos and other staff for giving her joy at the end of her life. They said she wore the outfit every day until she passed.
In another instance, a homeless man became emotional when Castellanos presented him with shoes.
“To see a person crying because you give them used shoes makes me grateful for all the things we have and take for granted. We are truly blessed,” he says.
One of Castellano’s biggest supporters is City Church in Homestead, where he attends service. He also helps the church feed the homeless once or twice a month.
Anyone can drop off donations for the homeless closet Monday to Friday, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Jackson’s Discharge lounge, Room 130. The most in demand items are comfortable walking shoes and reading glasses so patients can read labels on the medicine bottles.
HELPING BABIES SURVIVE
In 2018, after the eighth baby was taken to Homestead Hospital’s emergency department due to a sleep-related death, Acosta, a nurse and lactation coordinator, decided she had to do something to prevent similar tragedies.
First, she contacted the Miami-Dade Examiner’s Office, which confirmed 14 babies had died from sleep-related deaths in
2017 and six of those fatalities were in South MiamiDade, the areas the hospital serves. Even worse, there had been two more deaths in 2018 than the previous year.
She shared the findings with colleagues and helped create the Safe Sleep Task Force at Homestead Hospital, which delivers approximately 1,400 babies each year.
The task force works to raise public awareness on the proper ways to put babies to sleep and provides all new babies born at the hospital with a sleep sack, a special blanket that looks like a sleeping bag and can reduce the risk of sleep-related deaths.
“I’m very passionate about this and I think it’s important for people to know,” Acosta says.
Most parents swaddle their babies at night, but Acosta says babies should sleep on their backs and without a blanket, unless it’s a sleep sack, which doesn’t bunch up, get tangled or cover the baby’s face.
The sleep-sack program has become a hospital and community-wide effort.
Dr. Darren Salinger, an obstetrician, donated about $60,000 to purchase sleep sacks for the next five years. The task force is planning to apply for a grant from the Young Philanthropists at Baptist Health South Florida to further their efforts.
Homestead Hospital began distributing the sleep sacks to new babies and their families in March free of charge. Acosta hopes to eventually offer the program at all Baptist Health hospitals.
“Our goal is to decrease the number of babies dying due to sleep-related deaths,” says Acosta, a nurse for nearly 14 years.”
TREATING INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES
May is a big month for Rhonda Goodman, associate professor of nursing at Florida Atlantic University (FAU). She is receiving the Palm Beach County Medical Society’s 2019 Heroes in Medicine Award in the Health Care Educator Hero category and her students in the FAU Student Nurses Association are also being honored in the Outreach Wellness Prevention Hero category.
Goodman founded
FAU’s first clinical study abroad program seven years ago in partnership with three nonprofit organizations in Guatemala. Since then, she has led hundreds of nursing students on more than 30 trips to Guatemala, where they provide primary care for approximately 8,000 indigenous Maya people living in the country’s mountainous region.
“It’s an amazing experience,” Goodman says. “Students say they are forever changed.”
The study abroad program is fully self-funded, which means Goodman and her students raise 100 percent of the money they need to carry out the work, including hiring native pharmacists and other medical professionals. They also raise money to purchase wood stove ovens from a maker in Guatemala, which they gift to families and assemble for them.
In Guatemala, students get to practice nursing in a traditional, instinctive way. The cultural exchange is also valuable for treating individuals from indigenous populations living in South Florida.
“They learn to feel for illness and become much more confident in their abilities,” Goodman says.
This month also marks the opening of a junior high school in Guatemala, which Goodman raised money to build, complete with luxuries such as a computer lab and flushing toilet.
In addition, she will meet with nursing administrators at the Universidad Estatal del Sur de Manabí in Ecuador, where she will begin a new study abroad program in the fall.
“I’m really excited to be connected with another nursing school,” she says.