Nurse Camp!

So the school I went to had an out reach program for high school students (Juniors and Seniors) who were interested in pursuing nursing as a career and also other health professions. I was in the inaugural class of this program.

Camp S.C.R.U.B.S was lead and run by the Nursing faculty in the community colleges nursing department. In the camp, each of the 20 high schoolers admitted were paired with a senior nursing student during the summer, for 4days. We were given a T-shirt, a lab coat, a stethoscope, book bag, and other goodies that we would use during the week. We got to keep all of these items and take them home. During that week we got to use the simulation lab at the nursing school, learn the requirements for becoming a nurse, and learn what we could do, while in high school, to be a successful nursing school applicant.

During the camp, we got to practice skills like starting an I.V., giving an injection, listening to heart and lung sounds, wound care, and birthing a baby, all in the simulation lab at the school. We even did a mach surgery in the mach OR,  assisted by our paired senior nursing student and senior surgical technology students. We got to practice doing surgical hand scrubs and maintaining a sterile field.

We did a rotation with senior respiratory therapy students and got to practice skills like intubation and airway management in sim labs.During the week, we had nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, flight paramedics, and more, come in and explain what they did and how we could follow in their footsteps.

At the end of the camp, first time goers got certified in CPR and returning students got certified in First Aid via AHA, from the EMS education department, who taught these courses during the camp.

So this camp was founded upon nursing, but exposed you to multiple Allied healthcare professions, to show Prospective students that there are many options in the healthcare field. Of course, my love was always nursing. I was 15 when I attended this program the first year l and I was permitted to come a second, and final, year when I was 16 going on 17. This camp not only solidified my desire to become a nurse but also made me excited and eager to want to be a part of this profession, as soon as possible.

It was when the faculty at this community college hosted this event that the explanation of ADN preparation and BSN preparation was truly broken down to me. They told us that the BSN was becoming the standard of nursing education, but that ADN prepare nurses had many options in our community and surrounding communities and that obtaining our A.D.N could be a path to completing our BSN, quicker and with less debt. It was after this that I realize that I wanted to go to a community college first, and that I wanted to go to this particular community college. I scoured the Internet to see if other schools were doing camps like this or that had I nitiatives like this and I found that they were only a handful of programs like this in the country.

The program even talked about how we could maximize community college education to save money on the cost of our education. It introduced me to the concept of borrowing responsibly to pay for school and minimizing student loan debt. What school does that? It was eye-opening. Open till the second year of this program I had all intentions of attending an Ivy League school with a big name. I had already been excepted into Cornell university before the middle of my senior year in high school. (Which didn’t have a nursing program by the way.) However, after two summers of this program, I began to do some research.

So it impressed me that this small community college, that my mom attended for nursing school, and that I had never considered, was doing something so innovative to recruit interest in a career in the health sciences. I knew it was the place for me to go for school. So that’s what I set my sights on, and I did it.

Fast forward almost 9 years (5 of which I’ve been a licensed Registered Nurse) and I’ve only recently taken out a student loan, less than $5000.