Safe Halloween Research Paper

A Safer Halloween

The act of trick or treating as it is now known today dates back nearly a hundred years in the United States. While it was developed from even earlier customs, the current custom can be best described as people, mainly children, dressing up and knock on strangers’ doors to receive candy and other small treats. While reports of poisoning candy or razor blades in apples remain factually unfounded and the subject of urban legends the night of Halloween now holds other more pedestrian dangers, such as those involving motor vehicle accidents and falls due to ill fitting costumes and poorly lit areas. Due to these dangers along with the fear of more extreme hazards, many parents have chosen to take their children to relatively safe

places to trick or treat such as malls or churches. Over the last few years Frontier City in Oklahoma City has elected to provide a safe alternative to traditional trick or treating at their Frightfest celebration. Several nursing students, including myself, chose to volunteer and pass out candy during this last season. While handing out candy at an amusement park hardly seems to have applications to a nursing practice, we were able to provide a safe and friendly environment for parents and children to come and celebrate the holiday.
In providing care to our community nurses can examine their actions and think of their interventions as being upstream or downstream.

Downstream interventions are those interventions that tend to happen after the examined event has already occurred. Examples include the care received at a hospital from an illness or damaged body, fire department responding to a fire, or food banks providing food that had previously been donated or otherwise procured. There is little debate that these are all import services required in keeping a community safe. However, if we go the opposite route and look up the stream perhaps we could find a way to stop as many people from getting sick, stop that fire from being set ablaze, or even keep families from needing food assistance in the first place. In nursing, there are quite a few examples of upstream interventions include vaccinations, nutrition, and education. By handing out candy at safer and more well lit areas with candy that was tamper free we were simply providing an upstream intervention. Of course, this may be an overly simplification of the idea, and maybe even be a bit of a stretch, however it was an easy way to introduce the students involved into the thought process related to these subjects in Health Promotion. By intervening in the situation before a problem has actually occurred we can improve the health functioning of our community and keep more people out of the hospitals and clinics. As a foundling nurse I can easily see how this can apply to my future nursing practice. By providing education and support inside the hospital room or out in the community I hope to provide preventative measures to improve the health of all those I care for in my future

practice.
It is possible that this volunteering opportunity may have had a mild change on my current community engagement. However, during this period of my life I have much to do to keep my life moving forward and I could, in fact, use a volunteer or two to help manage my house and home. This being said, I do now realize that being involved in the community does not require as great of a time commitment as I once thought it would to have meaning. Nor does the volunteering action have to be boring or difficult work all the time. The significance that this had on me was simply the realization that sometimes being involved in the community is just going out there, being part of things, and having the opportunity to observe my community and any needs it may have. Volunteering can just involve doing what needs to be done to assist others in their everyday lives or just letting them feel safer when trying to get involved in social community events and having fun. As ever, I am grateful to volunteers and someday I might choose to volunteer more of my time and energy when I can more easily spare it to do so.