SUNDRE – Several dozen high school students had the opportunity to participate last week in a program intended to introduce them to hands-on experience in health care and perhaps even entice them along a related career path.
Organized by the Sundre Health Professional Attraction and Retention Committee, which is a subcommittee of the Sundre Hospital Futures Committee, the once-annual nurse skills day was the first time the event was able to proceed since the start of the pandemic.
Previously held at the Myron Thompson Health Centre, pandemic-related restrictions had for the past couple of years prevented the program from going ahead.
And with ongoing public health measures in health-care facilities throughout the province, organizers were relieved to finally have access to the recently-completed eSIM lab located in formerly vacant office space in a building immediately adjacent and connected to the Sundre Fire Department hall that also houses an ambulance bay.
There were six stations which several groups of students rotated through, including but not limited to suturing, intubating, as well as CPR.
Facilitating the educational effort was a sophisticated, roughly $8,000 medical training dummy called Earl, which can simulate life-like responses such as a pulse, blinking eyes, seizures and even screams. Earl was plugged into a heart monitor generating an erratic simulated beat and put to use teaching the students how to perform chest compressions while conducting CPR on a patient who’d suffered cardiac arrest.
The program, which was held on March 21, was made possible courtesy of a partnership with the Rural Health Professions Action Plan and Alberta Health Services.