By Kaylan Galey
My name is Kaylan Galey, and I am currently a junior at Lawrenceburg High School.
I am involved in 4-H, volleyball, and Big Brothers Big Sisters. I am also involved with the youth group at my church, Whitewater Crossing. In the future, my plans are to become an orthopedic physician assistant.
In January I joined the 2020 Class of TAP MD, a program that allows high school students to explore physician careers though a variety of site visits and hands-on experiences.
The very first TAP MD event of the year was a success! We visited Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and got to experience their simulation lab. This was a great first event to participate in because it allowed us to see how important it is for health care professionals to remain practiced in their skills and how important it is to always be up to date with the latest technology that is in the medical world.
We started off in the main lab room and heard a presentation about all the different types of simulation that is possible. I did not previously realize the varying types of simulation and the specific purpose of each one. We also got to watch a funny clip from the TV show The Office which allowed us to see how important communication is when dealing with pressing situations. An interesting statistic I heard today is that 60% of the errors made in the medical field are due to communication error rather than from procedural mess ups.
To show how much information we retained during the presentation, we got to play a competitive game of Kahoot. This allowed us to interact with one another and have some fun! From there we were split into groups of five to seven people and had to work collaboratively to try and make the longest paper chain. This showed us how important it is to work together as a team and communicate with one another.
A Hands-On Experience
After listening to the presentation, we were divided up into two groups. The first group went on a tour of the simulation center while the other group stayed in the room and got to do some hands-on activities. We were able to see how each room replicated an actual patient room. This allows doctors and nurses to feel like they are working in the same environment doing patient care. There were different spaces set up, from newborn to adolescent intensive care rooms.
From the rooms, we went into a part of the simulation center that deals specifically with virtual reality. This was a very interesting thing for me to see because I did not realize how much the doctors and nurses utilize these pieces of technology. We were able to try out the virtual reality headsets which was really cool! One of the VR softwares was set up so that I was able to see a baby lying in a bed in front of me. I was able to listen to the baby’s heartbeat to tell if it was abnormal.
This is a great resource for doctors and nurses to train with advanced medical technology which allows them to experience a wide variety of symptoms and conditions. Another VR software I was able to try allowed me to observe different heart conditions. As I clicked on each condition it changed the way the heart looked so that it would mimic a real heart. Doctors are able to use this software to practice surgeries before they actually perform them on their patients.
After playing with the virtual reality headsets, we went back into the main simulation room. In this room there were multiple hands-on stations that we could work at. One station had mannequins set up allowing us to practice CPR. This was not as easy as it looked since you had to push hard and long to make sure that the patient was stable. There was another table set up with three arms you could learn how to put IVs in. This was something fun for me, as I had not previously experienced this.
The last table set up had a full sized mannequin with monitors and a camera inside of the abdomen. We learned how to intubate a person. This was a tricky thing because I had to make sure that I got the tube into the correct spot or else it would not work properly. All of these stations were a lot of fun because we got to do hands on things that I had not done prior to then.
For our first event, I think this one was a great activity. It allowed us to see all of the different ways that healthcare professionals work to improve their skills so that they will be prepared in situations that are not always in their day to day tasks. The hands on experience allowed us to get engaged in the activities which made it a great experience for everyone!
