Scrub Hub, a program launched by Jacki Jewell, executive director of the Visiting Nurses Foundation, and her mother, Lorri Speer, the nursing assistant program director at Centralia College, celebrated its one-year anniversary as fall quarter approaches and the need for scrubs amps up.
Jewell got the position as executive director four years ago and began to professionally collaborate with Speer, who has been the nursing assistant program director for 20 years, by starting Scrub Hub. The launch of Scrub Hub coincided with Nurses Week to celebrate nurses in the area.
“We really want to make it a mission to support future caregivers in our community, and we see an opportunity at Centralia College,” Jewell said.
Although Visiting Nurses already provides clothing and other items at a low cost, Centralia College students can use a voucher at the stores to make scrubs all the more accessible.
“Sometimes scrubs can be expensive and they just don’t have the budget for that,” Speer said.
The vouchers are worth up to $15 and allow students to go to either Visiting Nurses location in Chehalis or Centralia and purchase from their inventory of scrubs and gait belts. Both stores have designated sections for their Scrub Hub inventory.
“A lot of nurses get tired of their scrubs before they wear out because they live in them 12 hours a day,” Speer said.
Because of this, gently used scrubs are always accepted at Visiting Nurses.
The budget hurdle is unavoidable for students because scrubs are required for certain courses at Centralia College.
Students in Speer’s nursing assistant course, for example, are required to wear scrubs for lab days and when they work in the field at local nursing homes.
“The need for scrubs has been around forever. Accessing them has been a little more of a challenge because the brick and mortar shops for scrubs are just kind of disappearing,” Speer said. “There’s so many different brands of scrubs that it’s difficult to know how the scrubs are going to fit you until you actually get to try them on.”
The Centralia College bookstore and the Chehalis and Centralia Visiting Nurses stores have become the brick and mortar scrub shops that health care professionals need to find the clothes that work for them.
The bookstore and Visiting Nurses stores offer jumping off points for aspiring health care professionals to find a scrub brand that fits them well and reflects who they are so they can then purchase the scrubs they like from an online retailer if they wish.
Students and current health care professionals can also continue to buy from the bookstore or Visiting Nurses stores, as well.
The bookstore has recently donated brand new scrubs with the tags still intact to the Visiting Nurses stores because they cycled through their inventory.
"This donation from Centralia College, I think, celebrates the partnership we’ve created with the college in supporting the (nursing assistant) students and then getting that support back to continue to feed the Scrub Hub so that it’s sustainable moving forward,” Jewell said.
“The professional collaboration all the way around is just a win-win-win and it’s pretty exciting,” Speer added.
The collaboration between the three programs goes beyond the Scrub Hub initiative in the form of scholarships that are awarded every year to local health care students. Those scholarships help to maintain students’ ability to attend Centralia College’s health care programs and eventually graduate.
Centralia College graduates are going on to become local nursing assistants, home care aids, registered nurses and work in nursing homes, adult family homes, hospitals and doctor’s clinics.
“There’s no question that the need for health care workers is dire, across the country but particularly in our community. There are endless opportunities for caregivers, and, of course, they all have to be wearing scrubs,” Speer said.
According to Speer, the nursing assistant program always has a waitlist for students to get in.
“We just hired a new instructor and starting winter quarter. nighttime classes will be offered as well. We’ll be able to generate 30 (nursing assistants) every quarter,” Speer said.
Kass Ritchey, one of Speer’s students, said, “Lori’s class and any of the medical classes students will take at Centralia College, it’s not ‘Oh my gosh I have to go to school.’ It’s ‘I get to go to school and I get to go be a part and I get to help.’ Because that’s one of the best feelings ever.”
“It’s not like you’re taking a class and you’ll never use it again. This is something that everything you’re doing, you see the rewards of it,” Speer said.
Due to the influx of students about to start their journey in the medical field at Centralia College, Jewell and her team at Visiting Nurses ask that any gently used scrubs be donated to either the Centralia or Chehalis Visiting Nurses locations.
“There’s a lot of passion in this room for the nursing industry, and we’re really proud to support that here at Visiting Nurses Foundation because we know that that energy is being invested in the students who will then be taking care of your loved ones at home,” Jewell said.
Community members who are not, or were never, health care providers can contribute to the Scrub Hub by donating through the Visiting Nurses website and specifying that the donation is for the Scrub Hub or by visiting the locations and donating on site.
For more information, to donate or view the scholarship application, go to visitingnursesfoundation.org.
Neither the Visiting Nurses Scrub Hub inventory or the Centralia College bookstore’s inventory of scrubs are exclusive to students. All health care providers are encouraged to use the stores as needed.
