Mike Wolanin | The Republic Jenny and Sean McAuliffe, in black, teach Columbus Regional Hospital employee Brooke Dye, in white, and Kaylee Ebinger, in pink, how to hit punching bags during a complimentary kickboxing class at Farrell’s eXtreme Bodyshaping in Columbus, Ind., Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. Sean McAuliffe, the owner of Farrell’s, offered up free kickboxing classes to Columbus Regional Hospital employees to help them de-stress.
Local healthcare workers have been battling the COVID-19 pandemic for more than two years now. But last week, they took a brief respite to practice a different type of fighting.
Columbus Regional Health and Farrell’s Extreme Bodyshaping recently partnered to provide kickboxing classes for hospital employees as a way to help relieve some of the stress from the pandemic.
CRH spokeswoman Kelsey DeClue said the hospital has been “in awe” of the care that its nursing unit teams have shown to both patients and each other amid the challenges of COVID-19.
“Certainly we know these nurses and nursing unit staff members have endured considerable stress caring for patients, working extra hours and of course facing the stresses of the pandemic in not only their professional lives, but personal lives as well,” she said. “This was designed as an opportunity for these teams to get together, bond and enjoy a healthy activity and hopefully, relieve a little of that stress.”
The local bodyshaping studio is run by Sean McCauliffe and his wife, Jenny, who is also a pharmacist at CRH.
McCauliffe said that the hospital reached out to the studio with the goal of giving back to its employees.
“I was more than pleased to talk to them about it,” he said. “They were just wanting to find, like I said, a way for their employees to blow off some steam from the past couple of years and show them some appreciation for all of their hard work. … So I said, ‘Well, I have the perfect class for you. And I’d love to be able to do that.’”
The classes were free to the CRH employees, and the hospital covered the cost of the required equipment, such as gloves and hand wraps. The studio provided both a night session and a morning session to accommodate different shifts.
At present, those two sessions are the only ones the studio has arranged for CRH. McAuliffe said that they would likely reevaluate, following the classes, to see “how to go from there.”
The studio was excited about its partnership with CRH for the classes.
“These past two years have been super stressful on everybody, but especially our hospital employees and our first responders,” said McAuliffe. “I hear about it all the time, the stress and the deaths and everything else. And I’m just fortunate enough to be in a situation where I’m able to do something like this for them. … We both are very grateful just to be able to, like I said, have this opportunity.”
