There are body parts spread out on tables across the room. OK, not real body parts, but mannequin parts. They are pocked with holes and gashes, simulating wounds that health care or emergency medical workers might come across in an average day.
Students are gloved and wearing plastic aprons as they approach the tables, where a staff person is guiding them through a problem that requires a quick response.
“It was bleeding and we had to pack it down and apply a tourniquet and put gauze and stopped the bleeding. There was a lot of bleeding. But we did it. We did it. We stopped it.”
Elijah Johnson is taking a sports medicine class at North Pole High School. He was partnered with Adriana Livingston, who is also at NPHS and is studying to be a Certified Nurse Assistant at UAF.
“He was applying the tourniquet and I was putting gauze on the wound to stop it from bleeding while he was applying the tourniquet.”
In case you’re wondering, it is fake blood. Water and powder mixed just for exercises like this. About 25 students moved from station to station to see a demonstration or put their hands to work in a simulated patient treatment.
Other groups of students were upstairs touring lab facilities, or learning about vascular technology at the cardiac outpatient clinic.
Karen Lapp, the Talent Development manager for Foundation Health Partners, says these career exploration events give the students a glimpse into the many healthcare roles at FMH.
“Because there are projected to be about 4,500 new healthcare careers in the next 10 years in Alaska. And we are not growing; the population isn't growing, so how are we going to fill those jobs if the kids don't know about them? They don't know to go to school for them, so we need to introduce the kids to the jobs a lot sooner.”
Jessie Beyer, Talent Development Specialist for Foundation Health Partners, says the demonstrations also showcase some “behind the scenes” things that happen at the hospital. And, many non-traditional healthcare roles that support patient care.
“There are a lot of careers in health care that are not featured on Grey's Anatomy. There are a lot of skills in health care that are not featured on Grey's Anatomy, and so we really want to give students the opportunity to see that there are a lot of fits. Nurse and doctor are very easy and obvious, and we obviously love both of those careers, but there are a lot of other specialties.”
Those would be medical assistants, Licensed Professional Nurses, and Biomedicine, which deals with everything that integrates with the patient, like IV pumps, CAT scans, and insulin pumps. And there are hospital specialties that are a little less medical, like information technology and operations.
Avery Shenks and her partner are on virtual-reality headsets. One of them is at a car crash, the other is performing knee surgery -- without actually touching a real patient.
“It’s cool to see like what the different processes are as a surgeon or doctor, what the patient needed and, like, what care it needed first and what comes next.”
About one in 10 FHP employees have come through some kind of talent development program. There are 15 employees who started as high school interns.
Now, if it sounds like more than just high school kids need to see these demonstrations, the hospital will be holding another event in the spring, with more of the public invited.
