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The goal of our Young Social Innovators ‘Comfort over Crisis’ project is to raise awareness of the ongoing hospital crisis all around Ireland and raise money to improve waiting room conditions and facilities in our local hospital, Mullingar Regional Hospital. The number of patients in hospitals per day is gradually increasing, which means excessive stress on the staff. Many patients must wait in waiting rooms for hours on end. The distribution of facilities, such as hospital beds, is poor. We stride to help relieve patients’ experiences while they wait in these stressful environments. As well as that, we hope to aid the hospital by donating money, so that they have more money to cover more pressing matters. As well as that we stride to raise awareness about how hospitals are being put under pressure like our hospital and encourage locals to aid in any way that they can.
Our Social Issue
Healthcare
Why We Chose It
We choose this issue because not only have many of our school community but many family members have been in urgent need of medical help and care over the past year and have had to suffer while waiting on medical help. Many have had to wait over fourteen hours and in some cases their health has deteriorated as a result of waiting. This is not good enough. Although we recognise we don't have the power to change this, we can help our local residents to be more comfortable which the government make necessary changes.
Our Goal
Our big idea is to raise awareness of the health care crisis that is causing severe anxiety and discomfort to many patients across Ireland. We want people to recognise that this is due to staff being overworked, underpaid and consequently moving abroad for a better quality of life. We want to put pressure on the government and for others to be educated enough that they too do the same so they improve the situation and in turn improve our health care. While we wait for this to happen, we will take matters into our own hands to improve their situation.
Our Innovative Action
So far we have educated our junior students, made announcements in school via posters and the school intercom, created social media pages, had one full collection day in Mullingar with another coming up next week, this was invaluable to get the public on board and explain what we are doing and why. We held a bake sale, we are currently organising a raffle to raise more money, we have written to the health minister, president of Ireland, local newspaper and radio station to raise awareness. We want to improve our social media presence.
Our Impact
Our team has and is continuing to make a positive difference by shining a light on the current hospital crisis and by fundraising for those affected in their time of need. We have heard countless reports of the current overcrowding and long waiting times in our local hospitals. Although we cannot fix the core reasons for this issue, such as the lack of staff and hospital space, we have decided to create our project with the aim of making this situation less stressful for patients waiting in these stressful situations.