Melted candy ponds, teddy bear graham cracker "babies" and icing trees are some of the decorations portrayed on 22 edible gingerbread buildings on display at Richmond Hospital.
This is part of Richmond Hospital's first gingerbread house competition featuring 22 team-built and decorated gingerbread homes and buildings by Vancouver Coastal Health staff from acute and community sites.
This initiative is part of the hospital's Employee Wellness Program to promote connection and cheer, and it launched in the fall to enhance the workplace environment and support recruitment and retention, explained Augusta Babs-Ishola, director of strategy development and clinical optimization at Richmond Hospital.
And of course, bragging rights for hospital units if they win.
"This season has not been easy for everybody, so what we've been able to do here is create that environment and that small sphere that is full of joy and happiness to bring smiles to people's faces," said Babs-Ishola.
"One other big thing is that this has ... helped teams connect in the form of team-building efforts."
Each team or gingerbread home represents separate units within the hospital such as the urgent and primary care and Richmond birth centre departments.
Babs-Ishola told the Richmond News she was most astonished by the detail and creativity put into each submission by staff members.
"What's remarkable about it is that the teams have been able to do this on their own time and they're all so well-received with people hovering around (the area) just trying to see each one."
"All of this is really wanting to be able to create healthy lives within healthy communities."
Teams were given a month to plan, prepare and build their gingerbread homes with the only criteria being it had to be edible and submitted by Nov. 30, said Babs-Ishola.
"We encouraged everybody to be creative and they did it."
Chelsea Holob, a patient care coordinator in Richmond Hospital's acute medicine telemetry department, and her team of four were one of the 22 teams taking part in the competition.
Holob described their gingerbread house as a mix of traditional Christmas elements, nostalgia and what Christmas means to people.
"We kept the patients in mind when creating it and thinking about how not everybody gets to make it home for the holidays," she said.
"It's just kind of how important family traditions are and that togetherness, hope and belief."
Little teddy bear graham cracker "elves," fondant Mr. and Mrs. Claus and icing snowman were among the many details the team put into their gingerbread house, which took four days out of work hours and during break time.
"We added little elves working and we wanted that to kind of represent the VCH values about caring for one another and working together," said Holobs.
When asked what the most challenging part of building the gingerbread house was, Holobs said it was figuring out when to stop adding more components.
"We wanted to keep adding to it, so trying to figure out when to just leave it and stop with the different ideas and just stick to what we originally planned was the most difficult. We had a lot of fun doing it, and it was hard to kind of put it down."
And to make the gingerbread house interactive for visitors, the team added an "I spy" game to engage viewers to find different elements like a hidden snowman.
"We're pretty proud of ourselves and we were quite impressed with how the creativite ideas all of us were actually able to come up together and create."
Community members can visit the gingerbread display and vote for their favourite until Dec. 31 at Richmond Hospital's main lobby.
All teams will receive a participation token and winners will receive a trophy to keep for the year and prizes, which have yet to be announced.
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