Chapter Activities - The Arnold P. Gold Foundation

This page highlights two important events celebrated internationally by GHHS chapters, Solidarity Week and Thank a Resident Day, and offers examples of initiatives organized by individual GHHS chapters that were funded by a GHHS grant. This information, along with the GHHS Gold Guide on programming, is intended to inspire your own chapter’s activities in addressing issues of importance to your community. For more information, visit the GHHS Chapter Toolkit: Chapter Activities.

National GHHS Activities

Solidarity Week	Thank a Resident Day

Solidarity Week for Compassionate Patient Care is the week of Valentine’s Day. GHHS chapters, medical schools, and patient care institutions from across the country promote activities to celebrate their dedication to ensuring compassionate, patient-centered care. Share your plans for solidarity week by filling out this form! Download the banner here.	Residency is a key component of graduate medical training, offering an in-depth exposure to medical practice. It can often lead to long working hours matched with many responsibilities. Join the GHHS in bringing to light the importance of the residence staff and encouraging medical students at chapters throughout the nation to show our gratitude and appreciation on the last Friday of February. Share your plans for Thank a Resident Day by filling out this form! Download the banner here!
For ideas to celebrate Solidarity Week, see how other chapters around the nation celebrated in the past. Contact Pia Miller at pmiller@gold-foundation.org to arrange a Tell Me More® license for your institution. Medical students ask patients three questions about their personal lives, which is then turned into three phrases and displayed on a dry-erase poster above patient beds for everyone who enters the room to be reminded that each patient is a unique individual.	For ideas to celebrate residents, view the following PowerPoint. Furthermore, keep connected with others who are also partaking in thank a resident day celebration via social media!

Solidarity Week

Thank a Resident Day

Solidarity Week for Compassionate Patient Care is the week of Valentine’s Day. GHHS chapters, medical schools, and patient care institutions from across the country promote activities to celebrate their dedication to ensuring compassionate, patient-centered care.

Share your plans for solidarity week by filling out this form! Download the banner here.

Residency is a key component of graduate medical training, offering an in-depth exposure to medical practice. It can often lead to long working hours matched with many responsibilities. Join the GHHS in bringing to light the importance of the residence staff and encouraging medical students at chapters throughout the nation to show our gratitude and appreciation on the last Friday of February.

Share your plans for Thank a Resident Day by filling out this form! Download the banner here!

For ideas to celebrate Solidarity Week, see how other chapters around the nation celebrated in the past.

Contact Pia Miller at pmiller@gold-foundation.org to arrange a Tell Me More® license for your institution. Medical students ask patients three questions about their personal lives, which is then turned into three phrases and displayed on a dry-erase poster above patient beds for everyone who enters the room to be reminded that each patient is a unique individual.

For ideas to celebrate residents, view the following PowerPoint.

Furthermore, keep connected with others who are also partaking in thank a resident day celebration via social media!

The Gold Foundation supports GHHS chapters by offering grants of up to $1500 to support humanism-centered initiatives. Grants are also available for residents or fellows who are GHHS members. Learn more by watching the brief webinar below, and visit GHHS Chapter Grants.

Assistant Director of Program Initiatives, Michelle Sloane, presents on the chapter grant process to receive funding for chapter initiatives.

We welcome you to see ideas of past projects funded through the GHHS grant in our Practical Applications of Humanism Database. For instructions on how to find a chapter project supported with a GHHS grant, please visit Chapter Grants Application Process and scroll down to “Find a Past Project”. The following are examples of chapter-led initiatives funded through a GHHS chapter grant.

Sidney Kimmel Medical College DEAFMed: Deaf Education and Awareness Project

GHHS member Natalie Perlov speaks on Thomas Jefferson University chapter’s DEAFMed program, the first of its kind in the country. This initiative is designed to enhance medical students’ awareness of Deaf culture and language and improve their communication skills to combat barriers in quality care. The program teaches healthcare professionals about the importance of accessible language for Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing children, the nuances of Deaf history and culture, how to interact with interpreters, and the basics of sign language. A GHHS grant is supporting a series of live-streamed and closed-captioned education sessions for the Jefferson community. Natalie Perlov shares that participants in the program have had significant shifts in their perceived comfort levels working with Deaf patients and report higher levels of familiarity about American Sign Language. The program is officially being renewed for another year at SKMC and is aiming to shift focus to more interactive sessions with Deaf standardized patients, clinician panels, and more!

Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University Literacy is Health: Books for Shay

GHHS member Shamara Battle speaks about the Augusta University chapter’s initiative to address low literacy rates in their local Georgia community, as well as the lack of healthcare to the pediatric population during the COVID-19 pandemic. Partnering with several local organizations including a local elementary school, students collected books to give out at a free book/health fair they helped to organize. Parents and guardians received reading and writing resources to help their children learn at home, and masks to keep the community safe from COVID-19. The event featured food trucks, exercise activities, story walks, free health screenings provided by the Augusta University Pediatrics department, and mental health professionals from the Children’s Hospital of Georgia to teach parents and guardians about signs of depression, anxiety, and many other mental health concerns. The event was supported by over one hundred volunteers across 10 organizations. Additionally, chapter members purchased and donated a Buddy Bench to the school, which will continue to benefit the children of the school for years to come, and partnered with the Augusta University Literacy Task Center to distribute school supplies through a backpack giveaway event, benefiting 168 students.

University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus Senior Story Book Project

GHHS members Valerie Gao (left) and Linh Nguyen (right) from The University of Colorado chapter share on the Senior Storybook Project, a means to connect medical student volunteers to geriatric patients at the CU Seniors Clinic. Medical students interview seniors and hear and narrate their stories. The goal is to publish patients’ stories in a storybook available to the CUSOM community. They hope to combat social isolation and loneliness in their geriatric patient population, while creating educational opportunities for medical students by emphasizing the importance of curiosity and compassionate listening in clinical care. In this project, they recruit and consent patients through the CU Seniors Clinic while simultaneously recruiting medical student volunteers through social media and email. Student volunteers are matched with patients and may choose to guide the interviews based on the overall theme of the storybook this year, Gratitude. Volunteers then write up their stories and submit them for final editing by fourth-year GHHS leaders. Patients have the opportunity to review and edit the completed stories before the storybook is submitted for final publishing and printing. They plan to host a Book Reveal Ceremony in April or May 2023 to celebrate all the individuals involved in this project, while also using this as a fundraising opportunity for next year’s storybook project. The medical student chapter of the Gold Humanism Honor Society has supported this project since its inception four years ago; looking forward, the GHHS chapter will continue recruiting student leaders and volunteers and gain additional sustainable funding to continue this project in future years.

Our GHHS chapters have created amazing programs to foster support for patients, families, and the healthcare team. These ideas have been compiled in the GHHS Gold Guide, created in 2015, with information on how your chapter can stay involved in the community and spread humanistic care within your campus and abroad. It is available to anyone interested in enhancing his or her medical learning environment. Entries were shared by GHHS members from a variety of educational settings with the hopes that others would benefit from their experiences. Please use these ideas as jumping off points to create your own individualized activities tailored to the needs of your institution.