We recently were asked to create some pink scrubs for The Cuyuna Regional Medical Center annual Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure® team. We were excited to be able to participate in such a great cause.
We’d like to share a few pictures from the event as well as the story of how this all came to be. We will attach the video in a couple months when it is complete.
In the fall of 2009, a video was circulating on YouTube called “the Pink Glove Dance”. It was made by a hospital in Portland OR and in partnership with Medline, maker of the pink gloves. Medline donates money to breast cancer research for every case of pink gloves purchased. Many friends and co-workers shared the video with me and we thought it would be fun for us to do something similar as a medical center. The Cuyuna Regional Medical Center is a very progressive medical community with a strong commitment to breast health. We have a Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure® team each year in our local Brainerd Lakes race. The Crosby Campus Cruiser’s have won the largest corporate team award each of last 10 years.
The wheels started turning and a core group of our Race for the Cure® committee members met to brainstorm. A simple little video couldn’t be that hard to make, could it? We wanted to have a key prop to wear that would represent the medical center and also bring awareness for breast cancer. The pink scrub idea was born! After contacting many scrub companies and finding only one willing to work with us for adult scrubs, we continued to be challenged for kids sized scrubs. It has always been important to include families in our race team and we hoped that everyone could be dressed similar. I started an exhaustive search online and one day decided to check on eBay. Immediately upon entering a search for “kids scrubs”, I was directed to the “scwubs” site for infants and children scrubs. They even came in the hot pink color we were looking for! I contacted Tracey at Master Brands and she was quick to respond saying her company would do any quantity and any size we needed, and in the color we desired. Once we talked about our video project, she even said they would not only give us a great volume pricing discount, but also print our logo for free. We were hooked on the awesome customer service and willingness of Master Brands to jump on board with nothing but an idea shared. Needing administrative support, we then pitched our proposal and they were sold. We decided to invite our breast health partner facility “Riverwood Health Care Center” in Aitkin MN to join in the video project. Trey from the art department was instrumental in getting our logo just right and took great interest in our project and how it came about. He made certain that what we wanted was exactly what we got, and our expectations were more than met. I know they also worked hard to get Riverwood’s scrubs ready in time.
Word spread fast about the scrub idea throughout the medical campus and soon we had taken orders for more than 500 sets. With encouragement to also register for the Crosby Campus Cruiser’s Race for the Cure® team, we nearly topped 400 to capture the largest team award once again. Staff, families and friends came out in force to walk and run on race day and many even ran the 5K decked in pink, all to spread the message that “Crosby Cares” about the people in our community and breast health. Our team included 17 survivors!Filming for the video started the morning of the race with both the Cruiser’s and the Riverwood Ribbon Racer’s arriving early to shoot some “competition” footage. The Riverwood Racer’s wore light pink to complement the hot pink of the Crosby Cruiser’s. We made quite an impression on the crowd. We will continue filming throughout the summer to capture more “competive” vignettes between the two facilities, ultimately coming together joining forces and announcing our new breast health partnership. Our goal is to include many survivors in the filming. We will be using the song “This Town” by O.A.R. as a backdrop to the video. It’s really about the sense of community that our medical campus’ share and the feeling that “this town” spreads way beyond our city limits.
Every day there are nurses, lab techs, clinic staff, nursing assistants and more seen proudly wearing their pink scrubs to work. Kids have been spotted wearing scrubs in the community and many comment that they can hardly get their kids out of them! We are so pleased with the quality but mostly with the incredible service from everyone at Master Brands. We can’t thank you enough for all you have done to help make our project a reality. It’s still a long way from completion, but we could never have done what we have without the support of everyone at your company. With your help we will continue to spread awareness of breast cancer and work toward a cure!With sincere appreciation,
Lisa Slepica
Assistant Director of Nursing
Cuyuna Regional Medical Center
Crosby Minnesota
