Baraboo. . . August 21, 2006. . . Nurses in St. Clare Hospital’s Emergency Department are reminding their patients and visitors to “Buckle Up – Every Trip, Every Time” as part of a campaign that encourages the use of seat belts.  “We see too many lives lost in motor vehicle crashes where the drivers or passengers weren’t wearing their seatbelts,” says Alice Jensen RN, a member of the St. Clare Emergency Department’s Education Council that coordinated the campaign.

According to Jensen, rural traffic crashes have a unique combination of factors that create a higher number of fatalities.  “These factors include high speed on winding rural roads, alcohol use and reduced seat belt use,” said Jensen who added that sixty percent of all fatalities on U.S. highways in 2002 took place on rural roads.  

The nurses wrote for and received a grant from the Regional Trauma Advisory council to help support their campaign.  Posing from left to right in their “Buckle Up” shirts are Emergency Department staff nurses Laura Noonan, Stephanie Bode and Jensen.