Top: Medical students Rosie Grant and Sam Siljee with new parents Alan Bagley and Rebecca Weir and their twins, when the students gifted knitting to Dunedin Hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit on Friday. Below: Some of the knitting donated by Medical students. Photos: Sharron Bennett.
While medical students usually learn to use needles for stitching up or injecting patients, a large group of budding doctors at the University of Otago have also been spending their spare time grappling with needles of an entirely different kind: those that knit wool.
Learning mostly from scratch, 60 male and female medical students at Dunedin School of Medicine have so far knitted up more than 47 pairs of booties, 18 hats, 10 singlets/jumpers and one pair of mittens.
And it is all to help the newborns in Dunedin Hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and their families.
The initiative was the brainchild of Otago University Medical Students' Association Vice-President Rosie Grant, whose pregnant cousin had earlier asked her to knit some baby clothes.
Rosie says she has always loved knitting and had been lucky enough to have a grandmother who could teach her when she was little. It has been her go-to activity for stress relief.
"So many of us will leave Dunedin before we can give back in a meaningful way so I tried to think of something my colleagues and I could do now, before we move on."
Rosie wanted to do something to thank the Dunedin community for the important role they play in medical student learning. She says countless volunteers have visited her classes or let her come to them in their home.
“I've often felt that having a group of students staring and prodding at you and making observations about your body must be hugely daunting, but nevertheless many of these volunteers come multiple times because they know how useful their visits are for the students' learning.
“So many of us will leave Dunedin before we can give back in a meaningful way so I tried to think of something my colleagues and I could do now, before we move on.
“Following my cousin's appreciation of the knitted gifts I gave her for her baby I considered other new parents who might also be in need of some knitting. There can't be many parents who are more distressed than those whose babies have to spend time in neonatal intensive care and so I decided that these families would be the target of my project.”
The knitting was handed over to the Dunedin Hospital NICU staff on Friday.
A donation, along with funding from the New Zealand Medical Students' Association (NZMSA), helped with securing the necessary supplies. Threads Bernina Needlecraft generously gifted some yarn and Knit World Dunedin gave a good discount. Most of the knitting needles were sourced from Op Shops.
Watch the ONE News item on the initiative.