Due to the restrictions on visits, many Covid-19 patients are suffering alone in hospitals. These volunteers bring them iPads so they can communicate with their loved ones.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Alright guys, so we're here at Brookdale Hospital Medical Center, doing some iPad drop-offs.
00:05And I'm here with these lovely ladies. How are you doing?
00:08Hi!
00:09Hello, hello. So we've got 20 going to Brookdale.
00:11So if you want to grab that from Fox, this is you guys there.
00:14Okay.
00:15Yeah, thank you so much.
00:16Yes, we appreciate it.
00:18As it stands right now, there are unfortunately many, many patients who are completely cut off from their loved ones
00:25and don't have devices that are able to make these kinds of video calls and neither do the hospitals that they are at.
00:31So our goal is to do what we can to fix that and provide these hospitals with devices.
00:55Every doctor that we've kept in communication with that have received the donations from us have just been telling us, you know,
01:13there's just been a tremendous amount of gratitude from every patient that's been able to use the iPad to speak to their loved ones.
01:22And also from the hospital staff themselves, where they're getting kind of a burden lifted off their shoulders,
01:28where they have this kind of medium where they can help patients communicate without it just being kind of a, you know,
01:36a loss of words of what to say when they want to say goodbye or say I love you, you know, maybe even for a final time.
01:51The real lifeblood of our efforts is the donation of used iPads from people either locally,
02:15and we have volunteer drivers that go out and pick them up on a daily basis or from all across the country via mail.
02:20And we receive many boxes a day. It's a beautiful thing to see.
02:23In addition to that, we also have a GoFundMe and we have raised about $43,000 to go towards the purchase of refurbished iPads that we supplement those donations with.
02:35And then all of those iPads come together. We run this operation from all of our own apartments.
02:40You know, we don't congregate due to the social distancing rules,
02:43but we are working with a basket of hospitals and we identify a demand with them.
02:49And then over time, through various drop offs, we chip away at that demand.
02:53So we do daily drop offs to a basket of hospitals.
03:10We have a group of volunteer drivers that we work with who are out on the streets every day with a list of addresses where they're going and picking up these iPads.
03:18We have a system that involves putting them in a Ziploc bag in the trunk so that nobody has to be within six feet of each other.
03:24As far as the hospital drop offs go, those tend to happen by our medical student volunteers or me.
03:31I have done a few myself and they are with similar social distancing practices in mind.
03:36We're meeting our point of contact outside the hospital and having them grab a box from our trunk where we have all the iPads laid out and packed up neatly.
03:48I think one of the most exciting things is a lot of people have been sending in messages,
04:04just little notes along with their iPads that are thanking us, acknowledging just the hospital staff and also just messages to the patients who will be using the iPads.
04:16We pass along the messages to the hospitals, unfortunately can't keep the message with the iPad to go to patients, but that's just been incredible to see.
04:26There are people who are suffering alone and it's happening in a way that feels like it can be resolved or it feels like a difference can be made with a little bit of help from a lot of people.
04:40For me, I work in production and I work in commercial production, so I have a job where I'm used to stress and demands.
04:49However, I've never worked in the field of healthcare.
04:52I've never been face-to-face with some of these really impactful stories and testimonials, if you will, that have come out of this.
05:01With every story that I heard about how important a family member's ability to speak with their loved one was, when people come to us and say,
05:10my gosh, I don't know what I would have done without being able to see my loved one in the hospital, and that would have only been possible with a tablet device like this.
05:20It makes me realize how important this is and I can't describe it any more than it's just, this has become my cause.
05:28It's something that I feel like I can make a difference in and we are making a difference in and I'm very proud of it.