Teens try out nursing at camp

Students don scrubs

some witness surgery

August 03, 2006|By Blythe Lawrence, Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

TACOMA, Wash. — Students chosen to attend nurse camp at Tacoma General Hospital lounged on chairs last week, eating pizza and talking about things high schoolers talk about: grades, prom, college, careers.

But when they put on their new mint-green scrubs, everything changed.

Unruly hair was tied back. Bling was reduced to a stethoscope slung around the neck. Voices became hushed as students gaped at themselves in nursing duds.

"You can see they're impressed with the scrubs," said Audrey Van Veen, a registered nurse who volunteers at the nurse camp the hospital holds every summer. "About a year into nursing, they'll go, `Scrubs, big deal!"'

The goal of nurse camp is to generate interest in a profession with chronic personnel shortages, said Ethlyn Gibson, a registered nurse who suggested the idea.

Part of her motivation was to erase impressions of nursing as a demeaning job, Gibson said. Medical dramas such as "ER" and "Grey's Anatomy" often depict nurses as less important than doctors.

"It's unfashionable because most people think it's a female-dominated profession and you're at the bedside and subservient to patients," she said. "We want them to see it's not really what they see on TV -- it's the nurse who's there to pick up the pieces."

Hard to get into

Based on the percentage of applicants accepted, getting into nurse camp is harder than getting into the University of Washington. More than 200 applied this year, and 86 were accepted.

Students are required to submit transcripts, attendance records and a personal essay about why they're interested in health care.

The reward is a four-day immersion into the world of nursing.

Students get access to the critical-care unit and the labs as they shadow doctors and nurses. They get friendly with Annie the rescue dummy for CPR certification and perform "Skittlectomies" -- removing candy from mannequins.

If they're lucky, they may witness a birth or part of an open-heart surgery.

"We don't bar any holds as far as what we send them to," Van Veen said. "They are exposed to every possible form of health care we offer."

That means learning new words, like neonatology and gastroendoscopy.

Gastro-what? students want to know.

"Tubes," Van Veen said. "We put them down places and up places you probably don't want to talk about."

Students squirm and exchange knowing looks. Gastro-endoscopic nursing wins few converts.

One part of the nursing stereotype -- that the field is dominated by women -- is correct. Men make up less than 10 percent of the workforce, said Susan Ford, chairwoman of the nursing program at Tacoma Community College.

Many female nurses leave the profession after marrying to begin a family, creating a vacuum of nurses between the ages of 25 and 40, Ford said.

The nursing shortage

The majority of nurses practicing in the United States are between the ages of 40 and 55. Only 9 percent of nurses are under age 30. As the population gets older, more nurses will be needed. By 2020, only six states won't have nursing shortages.

The need for nurses who can understand different cultures is also becoming clearer, Gibson said.

Reaching prospective nurses before they enter college is important, Gibson said. Once in college, nursing school demands a high grade-point average and several prerequisites.

"A lot of them get shut out because they don't prepare" for the challenges of getting into nursing school, she said.

Students have different reasons for attending nurse camp. Some want to know if they can deal with working in a hospital. Some have parents in the profession.

"I just want to learn to do something and not be useless, standing off to the side," said Ashley Ault, a 10th grader whose father is a nurse in the Air Force.

Jerry Nnanabu, a 2006 graduate of Tacoma's Bellarmine Preparatory High School, learned the value of medicine early in life.

By age 2, Nnanabu had been diagnosed with asthma at Mary Bridge Children's Hospital in another wing of the Tacoma General building. For years, he worked with Dr. Lawrence Larson, a pediatric pulmonologist who still works at Mary Bridge.

"I guess you could say he inspired me," said Nnanabu, who will begin attending Princeton in the fall.

He wants to be a pediatric pulmonologist too.

For some, the camp will intensify their interests. But if not, that's OK too. "If they're at all astute, they'll pick up a ton just by walking through the hospital," Van Veen said.