MORRILTON MASH Camp

Teenagers get hands-on experience in medical field

By Jeannie Stone

LITTLE ROCK — Teens in the River Valley donned hospital scrubs and rubbed elbows this summer with experts at St. Anthony’s Medical Center in Morrilton to experience the medical field.

For the second summer, the 12 sophomores and juniors who participated in the 2008 MASH (Medical Applications of Science for Health) camp rated the experience as a success, as did the dozens of professionals who volunteered their time and medical know-how.

Students enrolled in the two-week camp observed surgeries, earned basic first aid and CPR certifications,delivered physical and occupational therapies to children and practiced putting casts on each other.

Camp coordinator Leslie McNeal fashioned individualized job-shadowing opportunities for students whoalready had an idea what careers interested them prior to camp.

One entire day at the camp was devoted to anatomy. After demonstrating proper operating room protocol, the students scrubbed andgloved their hands and tied their masks before entering the designated lab where Dr. James Ellis, an emergency-room physician, told the students to take off a shoe. He proceeded to demonstrate proper suturing techniques.

“This is actually called a throw,” Ellis said, holding up his suturing needles. “Wrap it twice around the instrument. That holds the tissue down a little better. Now, wrap it, just once, around your needle, grab it, pull through, but not really tight.” While the students attempted to mimic his demonstration, he said,“Look at the knot; it looks kind of funky. Our goal is to get the sutures touching as much as possible. The friction is actually what holds the knot together.”

Comments were kept to a minimum as students concentrated on their shoelaces, first, and then the finer suture thread and needles. “We are trying for a figure eight,” Ellis said. “You have to alternate your arms. See how I had to flip my arms around? That’s exactly how we do it in the emergency room.”

“I did it all by myself!” Ashley Ferguson, 16, of Morrilton exclaimed as she held up her shoe triumphantly. Ferguson wants to go into anesthesia, but she showed talent in the suturing department as did Ashley McCoy, 17, of Nemo Vista, whowas the last student to quit for the day. McCoy wants to be a pediatric nurse.

The camp curriculum included front-row seats for students who viewed surgery to correct carpal tunnel syndrome, an appendectomy, gallbladder surgery and a colonoscopy procedure. Jeremy Lewis, 17, of Morrilton liked his cardiology rotation best. “My favorite part of the camp, however, was watching the appendectomy,” he said.

McNeal said sometimes camp attendance prompts a change in the participants. “Last year most of the campers had their eyes on nursing but after going over to Kids First, two of the campers decided speech therapy interested them, and they are both gearing toward that field. Youhave to expose kids to different possibilities outside the realm they occupy. If they’ve never experienced it, they can’t imagine becoming it,” she said.

The regimented classes exposed the students to nursing, general-practice doctoring, physical therapy, occupational therapy, surgery, radiology, respiratory therapy, dietetics, pharmacology and other medical professions.

In addition to identifying the various professional tracks, classroom lectures emphasizedthe fundamentals of the medical sciences.

Air Evac, a medical transport helicopter from Vilonia, flew in and landed for tours, and the local ambulance, Med Tech, opened its doors to the students as well. It was the first time for most of the students to set foot inside an ambulance.

“We’ve added a lot more hands-on [activities] this year,” Gena Usery, a registered nurse, said. “The kids went to Morrilton Veterinary Clinic and were able to watch a C-section ona Chihuahua, witnessing the birth of five puppies ... watched a dog get spayed and ground a horse’s teeth.”

Tyler Burgener, 16, from Wonderview wants to go into veterinary science. “I like the whole idea of working with animals, and the surgery,” he said. Burgener enjoyed what followed the suturing.

Pieces of cow carcasses were placed before each camper, and not one student flinched. They were all handed scalpels while Ellis instructed them. “Hold it like you hold a pencil,” he said. “This is all muscle.”

As he dissected a heart, he grilled the students. “The left ventricle is very powerful. It has to push the blood for the entire body. What are the four chambers of the heart called?” he asked.

For the remainder of the class, the students identified, poked and sliced every inch of muscle and tissue lying on their tables. “Now try suturing some of your dissections,” Usery told the class.

“Is this the esophagus?” Emily Sanders, 16, of Conway asked. “Yeah,” Bailey Williams, 15, of Wonderview agreed. “That’s grass in there.”

Emily Kaufman, 15, also of Wonderview said, “I think it was on the way down.”

“He was eating good,” Ferguson added.

“This is where the trachea splits into the two lungs,” Ellis told students who surrounded him. He sliced the trachea open and showed them the rings of cartilage that keep the trachea open. “Air flows through the splits and makes more sur face air.” he said. “When air comes in the trachea and down through thelungs, it exchanges the oxygen and carbon dioxide, and what is that called?”

“Breathing,” Colby Hawley said. Hawley, 18, just graduated from Morrilton High School and is bound for University of Arkansas at Little Rock. “I kind of like to know how everything works,” he said.

Second-year medical student Drew Lewis was busy at another table. “Look what I have,” he said, and held up what appeared to be an organ of some kind. “It’s a sheep uterus, and, look what’s inside - a lamb fetus. If you follow this up you’ll find the placenta, and that is where the umbilical cord is attached to the mother,” he said as he gently pulled.

“Time to clean up,” McNeal announced. “And after lunch, we’ll do intubations.”

The MASH program made its statewide debut in 1988 in Pine Bluff with the expressed intent of influencing young people to consider rural medicine as a career.

It is sponsored by the Arkansas Medical Mentor Partnership, made up of UAMS regional programs, Arkansas Farm Bureau, Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield, Office of Oral Health, Arkansas Department of Health and Baptist Health as well as St. Anthony’s Medical Center and local businesses.

For more information on the MASH program at St. Anthony’s Medical Center, call (501) 977-2426. For general information on the medical center, visit www.StAnthonys-Morrilton.com.

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River Valley Ozark, Pages 59, 63 on 07/10/2008