Former affected person donates gaming system to Vanderbilt youngsters’s hospital

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – Ollie Graves spent a great chunk of her childhood inside Vanderbilt’s Monroe Carrel Jr. Children’s Hospital. While she was there, she remembers wishing she had a option to join with different sufferers and play video games — only a option to really feel like a standard child.

She was capable of make that dream come true for present sufferers with a particular donation.

For some children, they’re spending extra time within the hospital, hooked as much as IVs and wires, somewhat than taking part in exterior or plugging of their gaming methods. Years in the past, Graves was a type of children.

After profitable a charity contest placed on by Colossal and teaming up with the Starlight Foundation, Graves helped elevate over $3 million for teenagers getting medical therapy. She knew she wished to present again to the place that she says saved her life.

But not simply within the type of a verify — she wished to fill the void she wished she had.

Gaming as remedy

With the Starlight Foundation, Graves donated a transportable Nintendo gaming set.

“This one in particular can be rolled in between patient rooms and it has access to a bunch of different Switch games,” Graves mentioned.

The youngsters’s hospital has discovered that video games generally is a enormous a part of the therapeutic course of.

Two years in the past, Vanderbilt employed Graden Knapp as a gaming specialist. His job is to work with sufferers and provides them that point to simply be a child once more.

“You get this aspect of control that you kind of use while you’re here,” mentioned Knapp, Vanderbilt Children’s gaming and tech specialist.

From semi-professional video gaming to a job inside a youngsters’s hospital, Knapp says this wasn’t precisely the trajectory he thought his profession was on. But after working with children and seeing the therapeutic results video games have on the sufferers, he says these victories imply far more.

“You build this genuine, real connection with them and that is invaluable, and it starts with this connection to video games,” Knapp mentioned.

With Graves’ donation, Knapp says children don’t have to attend to come back see him to recreation — they’ll convey the gaming console to them.