Cavs guard Anthony Parker made a stop at Whole Foods Market in University Heights recently. And it wasn't to pick up a carton of soy milk.
Parker was there with his 7-year-old son, Alonso, to tour the store with a group of fourth-grade students from St. Felicitas School in Euclid, which was randomly selected from classrooms that participate in the Cavs' Fit as a Pro program.
During the visit, store workers talked about the importance of eating fresh, all-natural foods. Then Parker talked food with the students while helping them make a vegetarian wrap with hummus, arugula, red peppers and carrots.
"As athletes, we have to eat healthy," Parker said in a cordoned-off area at the front of the store while students seated behind him munched on the wraps they just made. "It's important that it becomes a lifestyle, not a diet."
Parker good-humoredly took questions from the group: a stream of "What's your favorite sport/color/food/teammate/Mexican dish/subject in school?"
Asked to name his favorite store, Parker answered "Whole Foods" with a guffaw after some loud coughing and ahems from the store staff.
Just as it is at any kid party nowadays, the students received goodie bags when they left, adorned with the Cavs logo.
Fit as a Pro, sponsored by Medical Mutual, is designed to encourage physical fitness and well-balanced nutrition among elementary school students in Northeast Ohio.
Participating classrooms track their daily physical activity and use a nutritional poster that shows information such as the food pyramid and sample diets of Cavaliers players as a teaching tool.
Kaiser's tunes of fitness
Tired of exercising or relaxing to the same old 2,000 songs on your iPod? Kaiser Permanente has a new place for you to tune in some fresh tracks.
The health care system is offering two custom stations on Pandora, the free (up to 40 hours a month) Internet radio service that you can personalize.
There's Kaiser Permanente Fitness Radio, which plays upbeat, driving music geared to boost workouts; and Kaiser Permanente Relaxation Radio, which plays soothing songs aimed at easing stress and tension.
On a recent afternoon, you could catch Daft Punk, Stevie Wonder and the Raconteurs on the fitness station, but the relaxation station was not working two days last week. KP officials said it would be back online soon.
Kaiser launched the partnership with Pandora this month on a six-month trial basis. Go to tinyurl.com/y9gp6ld to listen.
Practicing teamwork
Nursing and medical students at Case Western Reserve University are learning a new way to assess patients and then talk to each other about it, with the goal of improved patient safety and treatment outcomes.
Recently, the students attended a simulation to practice a communication tool called Situation, Background, Assessment and Response, or SBAR, a strategy used extensively in medicine (University Hospitals Case Medical Center and Kaiser Permanente have adopted it) that originated in the military.
The exercise involved actors posing as patients. The students assessed the actor-patient's pretend medical condition, then practiced communicating the situation and developing a plan using SBAR.
CWRU medical and nursing schools received a grant from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement/Macy to teach SBAR as a way to improve patient safety through better teamwork and collaboration among health care professionals. CWRU was one of six schools in the nation to receive the grant.
"We graduate and we become nurses and doctors and we don't have an appreciation for the other's perspective," said Mary Dolansky, an assistant professor of nursing who coordinated the simulation event. "We're trying to learn the best way to teach this."
Dolansky said that studies show patients frequently don't feel that doctors and nurses work as a team. She acknowledges that often professionals haven't taken the proper time to do it.
Reliable, flawless communication has taken on even more importance now that the Joint Commission, the hospital accrediting association, recently began to require that facilities must standardize their approach to handoff communications -- what one health care-giver tells another as the patient moves across the continuum of care, such as during a shift change or a transfer between units.
Because clinical teamwork often involves hurried interactions between human beings with varying styles of communication, medical errors occur most frequently at this point, studies show. Each transition is a vulnerable point when incorrect information could be conveyed or crucial information omitted.