Pennsylvania Hospital’s psychiatric care team members fill many roles: compassionate caregivers, motivated mentors, passionate patient advocates... and stars of the silver screen?
Last year, Lary Campbell, BSN, a clinical nurse in PAH’s Crisis Response Center (CRC), and nine of his theatrically talented colleagues created a short film for the annual Pennsy Pride competition titled “The Keystone Kops: Inspection Time.” The team’s black-and-white film honors the Keystone Kops — an absurdly inept police force featured in early twentieth century silent comedies — in both title and style.
In PAH’s iteration, a group of bumbling nurses and patient care techs discover that an inspector (played by Campbell) is on his way to their unit, and slapstick chaos ensues as they stuff donuts in their scrubs, bribe a patient to hide an unkempt room, and dispose of used linens while a colleague’s foot is tangled in the bag. While the inspector luckily doesn’t catch onto their hijinks, the film is a hilarious lesson in how not to prepare for an inspection.
“It was really well received, and we loved being able to make our colleagues laugh,” Campbell said. “Health care can be busy and overwhelming, and I think we can all identify with the stress of preparing for an inspection, but humor helps us to release tension and keep going for our patients. And we’ve already started preparing a video for this year’s Pennsy Pride competition! The CRC recently relocated from Hall-Mercer to the main hospital campus, so our ‘Keystone’ nurses will be depicting how not to conduct such a move.”
The film was such a hit that Campbell — who earned a certificate in film production and loves combining his creative film-making and clinical experience — decided to submit it to a number of film festivals. It was officially selected and screened at this year’s Houston Comedy Film Festival, London International Motion Picture Awards, Nice International Film Festival, and Madrid International Film Festival. Campbell was invited to walk the Madrid red carpet with fellow CRC nurse Beth Dunn, RN, this summer, and he’s eager to show off PAH’s film chops again soon.