A VW steering wheel. A playbill from any show performed in Montana. A 1954 dime. An electric meat slicer. And a Rosie O’Donnell Barbie doll.
These were just some of the items participants were asked to find for this year’s TUH-Episcopal Campus Scavenger Hunt—and while that might have seemed impossible, at least one team managed to submit each one.
“Submit” is the key word: while it would have been easy to take a picture of a VW steering wheel, the Scavenger Hunt’s rules required team members to bring each item to Executive Director John Robison’s office. Want to score 12 points for finding a canoe, or 9 points for a satellite dish? Your team had to figure out how to get them to campus.
That meant teams had to get creative: like the Episcopal Punishers, who brought in a Lego satellite dish instead of lugging in the 1,000 lb. real thing. Or Release the Hounds, whose team members Director of Therapeutic Programming Briana Stinson, LCSW and Nurse Manager Michelle Maag, RN called dealership after dealership until they found a local junkyard that would lend them an entire VW steering column, all while battling the clock to block another team’s submission.
Or all five of the teams, who would scramble at the end of each day when a special bonus challenge would be announced—including one memorable night when that challenge was to find 14 human teeth (which all teams managed to do).
“It’s so intense, and so fun,” says Maag. “The whole time, we’re all watching the other teams’ points go up and down, and we’re like, ‘We have to win.’ I’m in school right now, so I didn’t know if I could do it this year. But then I thought, ‘No, I love it too much.’”
Communication and Camaraderie
Scavenger Hunt participants are so devoted that it seems like a decades-long tradition, but this is actually only its second year. It’s the brainchild of Robison, who makes the list (this year’s had 166 items, excluding bonuses) himself. Teams have two weeks to find as many items as they can, and are welcome to enlist friends, family members, neighbors, and other coworkers in their search. This year, teams were capped at 16, and had to include employees from a multitude of shifts, departments, and campuses.
The point of those rules is to encourage team members who don’t usually work together to get to know each other—and according to participants, that’s even more rewarding than finding a Dollywood ticket stub in a thrift shop.
“During those two weeks, there’s so much communication,” says Yvette Valiente, Senior Director of Facility Services and member of Malpractice Freaky Finders. “It’s during work. It’s after work. It’s on the weekends. It’s pretty constant. You’re getting to know people you haven’t worked with before, and getting to know other people differently, because you’re talking all the time. And having people from other campuses is great. This year, Shane McDevitt, VP of Facility Services, was on our team, which was exciting for everyone who wouldn’t have had the chance to interact with him otherwise. That’s the part of the Scavenger Hunt that I love the most.”
“I’ve only been at Episcopal since June, so before the Scavenger Hunt, I felt like I didn’t even know people on campus that well,” says Lisa Hummel, RN, Clinical Nurse Specialist, and member of Release the Hounds. “But once you did this, you make friendships that you didn’t even realize you would. It made me expand my horizons. Now I’m even close with people from Jeanes. We had a group text going on, and we would be making jokes as we were trying to figure out how to find the items—it was just this camaraderie. I don’t think I ever would have had that if I hadn’t done this.”
Team-Building with a Purpose
The teams also had to come together in person for a series of group challenges, including cafeteria karaoke, sidewalk chalk art, pizza with Executive Vice President and Chief Nurse Executive Chaudron Carter Short, PhD, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, and karaoke in President and CEO of Temple University Hospital Abhi Rastogi, MBA, MIS’ car.
Pulling off these challenges required considerable ingenuity, especially since the requirements that team members come from different departments and work different shifts and on various campuses meant that getting enough participants together in one place was often difficult.
But somehow, the teams made it happen—and in their bids to win, they did it with style. In the case of cafeteria karaoke, for example, teams were asked to perform The Beatles’ ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,’ and they donned wigs, held up signs, and brought in bongo drums to set themselves apart from their competitors.
“I really think this is the core of how you create a strong team: through activities like these,” says Stinson. “Sometimes stressful situations help bring people closer together. I know we were having fun, but we also wanted to win. I think you really have to get creative in how you reach your staff, so that people know they can have fun at work, but also build the tools they need to work together when there really is something important going on.”
More Fun for Everyone
As hard as everyone worked, only one team could come away with the top prize—and after two very intense weeks (and one bonus question involving mirrored swim goggles), the Malpractice Freaky Finders were declared the winners. The team won a total of $1,161.16 in cash, and each team member received a Wawa gift card, a chocolate chip cheesecake, and a University of Delaware ink pen. All of the other teams also received a prize (including a $500 donation made to the Greater Philadelphia Out of Darkness Walk in honor of the Episcopal Punishers, who came in second place).
Of course, as exciting as the prizes were, they weren’t the real reason anyone signed up for the Scavenger Hunt. “When I was asking my friends whether they had any of the items, the first question they had for me was, ‘Well, what do you get if you win?’” says Nancy Abraham, BSN, RN, CPXP, Director of Patient Experience at TUH-Main Campus. “And I didn’t even know. I think that’s the best thing: the fact that everyone is doing this out of pure fun and pure delight.”
For the next installment of the Scavenger Hunt, Robison hopes to expand the competition to include more competitors like Abraham: employees from other campuses who want to join in on the excitement. “I recognize that our team isn’t just Episcopal: it’s 12,000 people from across the Health System,” he says. “I want everyone from across Temple to know they’re invited, and to be able to get involved.”
That might mean making a much longer list of items—though this year’s teams made short work of the most recent one. At the end of the two weeks, only 12 items hadn’t been found. That included a Wannamaker’s shopping bag, which was the only item that had been carried over from—and that had also not been located on—the previous year’s list. That means, if you’re planning on participating next year, it might be a good idea to start searching for it…