Students enrolled in Lakeside High School’s Healthcare Sciences program spent March 25 in the Augusta University interdisciplinary simulation center.
Thirty-five instructors, including faculty and students in MCG’s medical, nursing, physical therapy and respiratory therapy disciplines, demonstrated topics ranging from the proper way to dispose of medical waste to CPR.
“The main purpose is to provide them exposure, because in the school, we teach a lot of things like, but we don’t have the opportunity to let them practice it.,” said Dr. Vikas Kumar, associate professor for the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine. “So, in simulation, they can come and do the hands on. They can touch the mannequin and do the procedures which has much more value than just teaching in the classroom.”
Kumar said they have offered this workshop to other schools in the past, including A.R. Johnson Health Science and Engineering Magnet School in Richmond County. He said Lakeside’s teacher contacted him and asked if it could be offered to their students.
Teacher Lisa Olsen said it is a way for students to experience real-world situations.
“This is why we’re all going into this profession to take care of people, and to help them to where they can live out their best life.,” she said. “So, I feel like, by bringing them here, they can see all the different areas of medicine.”
About 50 students participated in the workshop. They were broken into smaller groups and moved through the various workstations.
“It gives us the closest we can get to a real-world example. The labs offer that exactly, so it helps us to learn, you know, a better insight of more about the different stations and it helps us decide if we want to go into certain things like PT or OT,” said Sara Jane Mobley, a junior at Lakeside.
Kumar said they would like to reach beyond Richmond and Columbia Counties into rural areas where students do not have access to resources like the simulation center. Ideally, he would like to have a mobile unit the teaching instruments can be loaded into and go to the rural schools.
Dana Lynn McIntyre is a general assignment reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach her at dana@theaugustapress.com
