May 15, 2025 5:56 PM PT
Part of Monica Gil’s new-hire orientation at Children’s Hospital of Orange County earlier this month involved a photo session. A meaningful message she chose was written on her right bicep with a marker — which was followed by a quick photo shoot.
Gil chose “¡Si Se Puede!”
“I love the project of Dear Hospital. It was really cool,” Gil said. “And I wrote ‘Si Se Puede,’ which means ‘Yes You Can’ because I think you can turn anything into positive. And anything you want, you can do it.
“I have a son and I can teach him the same thing. That anything you want to do, you can make it happen.”
The photo session is part of a larger project called Dear Hospital that was spearheaded by three CHOC employees as a way to encourage connection, camaraderie and mental health awareness among hospital employees.
The idea sprouted from the American Assn. of Critical-Care Nurses’ National Teaching Institute conference in May 2022 attended by Jennifer Hayakawa, CHOC’s director of Nursing Research and Innovation.
It was the first in-person nursing conference after the pandemic. Hayakawa was interested to see how the conference would inspire nurses experiencing burnout, defeat and isolation post-pandemic. The Institute partnered with Dear World storytelling company, which led the nurses at the conference through a unique experience.
“We wrote the short, meaningful messages on each other and as we did that and stood in line, people opened up to each other,” Hayakawa said. “We shared stories, we cried, we laughed, we bonded and we healed. And I was just so in awe of what happened and the power of that, that I was like, ‘How do I bottle it up and bring it back to CHOC?’ Because I know, our nurses felt that way as well.”
On her return to the hospital in Orange, Hayakawa pitched it to her chief nurse and was allowed to move forward with finding funding and working with Dear World to customize the program to a hospital setting — which hadn’t been done before. They received a $100,000 grant from #FirstRespondersFirst, a fund sponsored by the Entertainment Industry Foundation as part of the campaign ALL IN: Well-Being First for Healthcare.
They began the program with the CHOC executive management team and continued with the nurses.
“And then we expanded and expanded and now it’s part of clinical orientation, so all of the new hires that are taking care of patients and families are all onboarded with this experience — so we do it every two weeks,” Hayakawa said.
(Jessica Peralta)
With the help of Dear World, Hayakawa and CHOC Clinical Research Nurse Coordinator Paulina Schuhler learned how to take the photography — which is in black and white — and conduct the sessions, which also involve getting the participant’s personal story.
With licensing and certification from Dear World, they eventually hired from within CHOC and trained 10 storytellers who facilitate the sessions. They also eventually partnered with Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts to have student photography interns take the photos.
Part of customizing the program to a hospital setting included designing the sessions so that employees could have the experience and then continue on with their work of caring for patients and families.
“We had to really put some guardrails around the experience to get them to tell more joyful stories to still be deep and meaningful, but to do it in a safer way that allows them to continue with their day to day,” Hayakawa said.
“We’ll still sometimes get trauma unleashed — it happens. And we actually have incorporated that into a discussion about mental health. We use those in onboarding to say, ‘You know what we do here is tough and it’s OK to not be OK.’ And here are the resources and support system that are available to you as an employee or as a member of the community as well. Because that’s an important conversation to have.”
(Jessica Peralta)
As the program has developed, the Dear Hospital team works with different departments and groups. For new-hire orientation, the sessions focus on CHOC values to develop stories, but the team also continues to do two-hour sessions for retreats and groups like social workers and frontline nurses.
“Most recently our patients and families have started doing it,” Hayakawa said.
They partnered with the Child Life team to target adolescents and young adults, and had them reflect on inner strengths.
“At that age a lot of them are struggling to find their inner strengths and to talk about themselves in a positive way,” Hayakawa said. “So that exercise in and of itself was really good. But then they were able to pull stories from their healthcare journey that reflect on those inner strengths. It was a really meaningful experience for them. We had a really good time with that. We’ve been featuring some of those stories.”
Another element of Dear Hospital now is a pop-up exhibit that happens quarterly and displays the photos and stories of participants in the hospital lobby for about a week. The first exhibit was in September 2024. Their third exhibit was nurse-themed and ended May 9, taking place in time for National Nurses Week. They also had a mini version of the exhibit at CHOC at Mission Hospital. With more than 1,800 participants since the program launched, the Dear Hospital team has plenty of stories to tell. The next exhibit takes place in July.
During the photography sessions, messages — also known as “brain tattoos” — are written where the participants choose on their body with a skin-safe marker. The ink can be removed with baby wipes following the session.
At the recent pop-up exhibit at CHOC’s Orange location, messages like “Invisible, I See You,” “It’s OK to be Different” and “Here to Serve” were featured on participants’ arms and hands in the large black-and-white photos.
Hayakawa said they’ve had participants have messages on the face, neck, chest (where it’s not too revealing) and stomach. Some participants might cover their face for the photo.
“The pop-up kind of serves as a purpose to share what we do,” said Rebecca DeAnda, department assistant for Nursing Research and Innovation. “We can choose from this huge collection of photos we have and feature some of those but also give some representation for what Dear Hospital is. And so it has brought a lot of new departments who are interested.”
DeAnda said the program has been very well received and helps break down barriers.
“We all have something important to say,” she said. “And something that is important to me should matter. Having that connection and fellowship is really at the core of what we do at CHOC and why it makes this special.”
At the May 6 photo session, Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Nurse Nichole Johnson chose “Powered by Purpose” as the message on her arm.
“Part of it is the reason why I still work in the ICU, the reason why I still do what I do,” Johnson said. “ICU is a hard place to work and I Iove it. Yeah, it gives me purpose to work there.”
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