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Project Online

Summer Sinnock

Department of Public Health

KINS 4306: Internship in Public Health

Dr. Kaninjing

24 April 2022
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At the end of my presentation, my audience will be able to see the difference I as an

intern made on the resident’s over a sixteen-week period by taking them on walks. To achieve

this objective, I will be discussing the residents that do not walk every day on their own and how

I helped them to get on their feet and walk with me. At the end of my presentation, my audience

will be able to implement everyday walking with residents who need the extra help to walk on an

everyday basis. To achieve this objective, I will be explaining the strategies I used and the tools I

used to walk with the residents. One strategy I will be using is photos. Using pictures in

presentations helps to show my audience the resident’s faces and reactions to walking and being

out of their room. Another strategy I used is safety precautions. Although this does not sound

like a strategy, it can be used to make a resident feel more comfortable which creates an increase

in the willingness to walk. Some of the safety precautions I enforce are comfortable footwear,

making sure all pathways are clear, that a CNA or nurse is near or another intern for help, a gait

belt used for certain residents (Denton and Archer), guiding their hands or arms for help, and

having wheelchairs nearby in case they feel weak. Another strategy I imposed is that I talked

during the walks to build relationships and trust between residents and interns. This helps

contribute to the willingness of a resident to walk with me. To determine if my objectives were

met, I can use an outcome evaluation for a summative evaluation.

Walking is something that is needed because it can help with depression as I talked about

in my presentation along with social isolation. This population is at high-risk for depression and

social isolation especially in this environment. Moving to a new home, usually alone, can be

frightening and doing anything that can boost a resident’s mood is worth doing every day. This is

why I chose walking because it is a simple action that can make a huge impact on someone. As I

discussed as well in my presentation is the relationships I built while walking with these
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residents. We are new ears and faces to the residents and they enjoy talking to us and usually

they forget how much walking or even standing up they have done because they are telling us a

story from the past or talking to us. Something we could have done differently is chosen more

residents and residents that do not have a physical therapist. Two of our residents had physical

therapist that would do exercise or have them stand up or walk so what we solely did could not

have been measured since there was another factor. Our supervisor, Lauren, brought this up at

the end of our presentation and we explained that the physical therapist only comes once a week

where we are there a lot more. We explained to her afterwards that that is why one of our

outcome evaluation questions is will this be continued after we leave because walking and

moving around even if it is two seps a day is beneficial in more ways than we can imagine.

Another topic discussed in our presentation is that not all residents were constant. We had one

resident that we spent time with getting her out of bed into her recliner and in Febrary out of her

room to the dining room for a Valentine’s Day party, but after that she did not come out again.

We explained that even though she did not want to come out of her room we did not drop her

from our program, we continued to encourage her to get out of bed because one of our goals was

to decrease the risk of depression and social isolation. Below is three outcome evaluation

questions we wanted to reach with our walking club along with our implementation plan over a

fourteen week period.

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Outcome Evaluation
Were residents who participated in our walking program more likely to be more effective in
performing daily functions?
Did the implementation of walking result in changes in behavior and attitudes among residents?
Do the benefits of our walking program justify a continued allocation of a walking program at
Fellowship Home at Meriwether?
Implementation Plan
Task Week
1
Week
2
Week
3
Wee
k4
Week
5
Week
6
Week
7
Week
8
Week
9
Week
10
Week
11
Week
12
Week
13
Week
14

Choose which residents need

most

Get certain residents out of bed

everyday for one week

Walk residents out of their room

and into hallways/common areas

Walk certain residents to the

bathroom instead of bedside pot

Walk with residents outside of

the building

Get residents out of their

wheelchair and standing

Get residents out of their

wheelchair and walking to a chair
or bathroom