High School students get a real taste of medicine from Kaiser Permanente

About 200 Bay Area high school students spent their day pretending to be doctors, nurses and health care workers saving lives, delivering babies, performing foot surgery, and working with injured patients, at a unique Career Day event set up to show them the spectrum of health care jobs.
Kaiser Permanente opened up its high-tech Garfield Innovation Center in San Leandro where the students, many from southern Alameda County, participated in simulated but realistic health care scenarios in realistic hospital settings using electronic “Sims”, vinyl computer-controlled mannequins that breathe, talk and have heartbeats.
“So often, students think only about trying to be doctors and nurses,” said Jo-Ann Griffin a registered nurse and Chief Operating Officer at the Kaiser Permanente San Leandro Medical Center. “We hope to show them the wide variety of health care jobs out there needed to provide positive outcomes.”
Griffin says there’s a shortage of highly-trained workers needed to form the teams that take care of patients s. And the Garfield Center is the “test bed” for technologies for Kaiser Permanente’s Hospitals of the future. So it was a perfect setting for this Youth Career Day.
In one such setting, the students learned about the birthing process, working with “Noelle,” a pregnant electronic mannequin that is about to give birth.
Nurse trainer Mary Ann Wedel began asking the students to volunteer for many delivery room jobs needed in a real labor and delivery room.
“I need an obstetric surgical tech, I need a pharmacist and a pharmacy technician. Someone needs to be a supply person. I’m going to need someone to run the ultrasound as a technician, and an anesthesia tech, too,” Wedel said.
Wedel, who is a labor-and-delivery nurse at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara, said, “These are the people who have to be part of the process or it’s just not going to go smoothly.”
“It’s called Team-Based Care,” said Stephanie L. Decker, who is a Policy Consultant in the National Patient Care Services office for Kaiser Permanente.
Nurse Wedel assembled her mock delivery team, and the Sim announced she was in pain. One of the students was enlisted to help turn the mannequin on its side while another student pretended to administer an epidural injection.
“I feel much better,” said Noelle, the mannequin. Then her computer voice announced “The baby is coming.” A student was enlisted as a “midwife” to help deliver the baby which is mechanically ejected from the mannequin.
Fifteen -year-old Giselle Cervera, who goes to Arroyo High School in SanLeandro, was gowned up in hospital scrubs and delivered the infant. Giselle’s eyes were filled with confidence as she cradled the vinyl baby.
“I was nervous at first, but then it was OK,” said Giselle, who looked quite comfortable in her role as a midwife. “I’d like any job in health care. This was fun.”
“High school students are beginning to think about careers,” said Peggy Hilden, Kaiser Permanente Healthcare Education Management Director. “We wanted to expose the students to the many jobs out there, and also provide them with resources about how to achieve them.”
One of the Garfield Center conference rooms is filled with information about schools and college programs teaching the skills needed for areas of health care work. A group of Emergency Medical Techs talked about learning the skills for their job, after having the students participate in a CPR scenario in a realistic hospital room.
The Youth Career day is organized by Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit and the Kaiser Permanente Patient Care Services.