Picture yourself as a focused, diligent nursing student. You’re preparing for a career in the ER or maybe in the medical-surgical unit. You’re sitting down in front of a professor for the first time to discuss your clinical assignment. You’re intense, serious, and ready to go. Then, the professor brings out a teddy bear.

A teddy bear?

“At first, there was some apprehension,” says Amy Campbell, RN, BSN, with a contagious southern chuckle. “But then they realized they were part of something big. Sometimes behind-the-scenes people are really important. You don’t have to code someone to make a difference in their lives.”

With the help of some preschoolers and some furry, little friends, that concept is just one of many that Campbell is teaching her nursing students at Pitt Community College in Greenville, N.C. Campbell got the idea for the Healthy Teddy Project from a story she read about teddy bear hospitals. “The North Carolina Board of Nursing is always looking for more creative ways to do clinicals,” Campbell says. “We’ve been trying to think of something different.”

So Campbell, who has worked at Pitt for four years, secured a $4,700 grant from the Eastern Area Health Education Centers Program and launched the creative project last week. She made a trip to the Wacky Bear Factory, gathering 43 teddy bears that were given to preschoolers last Friday in the college’s child care center. This week, the first of six, was orientation for everyone, including the furry patients. “They all have little names, like Levi and Boo,” Campbell says. “They’re all real cute.”

The eight nursing students picked to work on the project are going to teach various healthcare concepts to the preschoolers by using the teddy bears. The project is broken down into four main components:

• Paw time–This will be introduction and group interaction where topics such as hand washing, nutrition, and safety will be discussed each week
• Paw play–The preschoolers will be able to play with an item that relates to the topic (e.g., a stethoscope)
• Helping paws–The Teddy Bear Lab, a themed examination table for hands-on instruction
• A Healthy Teddy Web site–The site will tell parents what’s going on and include an “Ask the nurse” section

“It’s all going to reinforce what [the students] are learning in class,” Campbell says. “They aren’t going to give injections, but they are going to learn the critical thinking behind it. Students will be learning the essence of prevention, and they’ll be learning how to teach and work with that population.”

Nursing students usually do clinicals in hospitals or other acute-care settings. This way, they’ll get a taste of something different and they’ll still get credit for a pediatric rotation.

“They still have to meet objectives and do the clinical paperwork,” Campbell says. “But this is completely different from anything we’ve done before.”

And, of course, there’s one more compelling reason: “Children love teddy bears,” says Campbell. “And students love working with kids.”