A few groups of teens flocked about a dozen first responder personnel and their trucks. The teens were volunteers, and the emergency professionals had come to the hospital to give them an up-close look at their job. And there was a lot for them to see and do, like trying on firefighter jackets, climbing engine ladders, and prepping a dummy in the back of an ambulance.
“We're just kind of looking at all the emergency services and just like, getting a feel for, like, what they do and how they do it.”
That’s Joseph Kincannon. He’ll be a senior next year, and he’s spent the past two weeks working at the hospital under the University of Arkansas For Medical Science’s Medical Applications of Science for Health, or simply M*A*S*H* program. It’s an enrichment camp that allows kids around Joseph’s age a chance to explore the medical field from top to bottom.
“It's not like you're like, specifically looking at one thing,” Kincannon said. “You're getting a feel for the entire medical service as a whole. So it can be from anything from like, administration to surgery. And so this just kind of shows you, like, the full steps into it. Because obviously, if someone's having an emergency, they don't just, I mean, they can, but a lot of the times they take an ambulance and, you know, the fire department's gonna be there, probably at police as well. So it's just kind of getting a feel of the whole process of an emergency situation.”
M*A*S*H*participants weren’t the only students out there last week. Baptist Health’s Caring Teens were also in attendance. Amanda Collins is Baptist's volunteer coordinator, and she said the two programs are very similar, but Caring Teens receive a longer, more in-depth experience.
“They get here at about 8:45 in the morning,” Collins said. “And they draw their departments, and then they go, they're in their departments from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. So if they're in surgery or ICU, or the ER, the nursing floor, wherever. They take a lunch break, and it's kind of like a shadowing. So they're not allowed to do any one on one personal care, per se. But if there is a surgery going on, they are allowed to go in and observe the surgeries. There's a labor going on, and you know, the client, the patient's all consent, they're able to go in and observe that.”
Ella Alder is a ninth grader and has volunteered with Caring Teens all summer. She said the experience has differed from what she expected.
“It was weird,” Alder said. “Because I've never really seen what it's like working at the nurse's station, and, like, answering calls is just different. Because patients could just be asking for anything, and like, I assumed that it would be just for snacks or something.”
Alder’s spent her time at the hospital doing more than just fetching snacks. She said her favorite part of the job is delivering samples between departments.
“I enjoyed, like taking blood work to the lab and stuff,” she said. “I got to do that, and it's really fun.”
JT: Okay, do you have to go off campus for that?
“Yeah, no, not off campus, but, like, I would have to go outside and to different buildings.”
Meeting medical professionals, like first responders, may also offer valuable guidance for the teenage volunteers. UAMS education coordinator Ursula Redmond said those who work in emergency medicine can provide a model for young people.
“So this hopefully is an experience that will kind of help them solidify what that next step will be, or at least a direction,” Redmond said. “Like, I think they said we change careers, but, you know, six times in life, but you know, at least it's a good start. And so students can feel really good about like that next step, and know that there's something in their community that they can come back and go to.”
Even if the kids don’t know exactly what they want to be (and let’s face it, who does when you’re in high school) an experience like Caring Teens or M*A*S*H*could still be life-changing. Trent Shaffer is an emergency medical technician. In between demonstrating how to hook up an IV to a gurney-bound mannequin, he touched on how meeting someone in the medical field could have provided some clarity in his own youth.
“I at first did not want to work in healthcare,” Shaffer said. “I did not want to be in a facility for long, for long periods of time. So I had joined our fire department. Got on and went to EMT school and got on the ambulance. And I didn't know that this is what we did on the ambulance, you know? I just thought we went and picked people up. So I had a big reality check working on the ambulance. And so for us to get to come out and to show people because a lot of people really don't know we exist. It's like just they see us in passing, and that's all that it is. So for them to get to actually see us and see the capabilities that we have, I think could really spark some interest in going in this field.”
After weeks of long hospital shifts, M*A*S*H* concluded with last Thursday’s event, and the Caring Teens program ended yesterday, July 25. If your 14-18-year-old is interested in trying out the medical field, you can visit Baptist Health’s website or UAMS’ to learn more about both healthcare system’s teen volunteer programs. Applications open early next year.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. The authoritative record of KUAF programming is the audio record.
