F our Cities Compact Senior Advancement to Nursing students have spent the last few weeks gaining clinical experience in the hospital setting.
The Advancement to Nursing program, ATN, is a competitive two-year program that prepares students for a future career in healthcare.
Starting junior year, the students take an honors anatomy and physiology class that teaches them the body’s anatomy and functions. They are taught how to properly care for patients with various levels of illness. They use these skills in their mock hospital setting, displayed in two of their three classrooms at Barberton High School in Barberton, Ohio.
Students then have multiple opportunities to shadow nurses at Akron Children’s Hospital.
“Juniors will shadow multiple departments at Barberton Summa Hospital [such as] surgery services, acute care, inpatient medical, radiology, pharmacy, respiratory, we do a whole-day showdown an RN at Akron Children’s Hospital,” said Christa Taylor, former ATN alumnus and junior ATN teacher.
Ava and Abby Perkins, seniors in the ATN compact, shadowed on the surgery floor and saw many different operations performed.
“I got to watch a colonoscopy, and I also got to watch them put a nasogastric tube, a tube that goes through the nose into the stomach, in a three-month-old,” Ava Perkins said.
Ava Perkins was given the opportunity to see a laparoscopic hernia repair done during her shadow. This surgical procedure uses three to four holes and a laparoscope, a thin tube with a camera at the end to guide the surgeon.
“I watched the whole anesthetic process and then [I] watched the surgeons attach four robotic arms into the woman’s abdomen,” Abby Perkins said. “I saw the whole process from a camera attached to one of the arms because it was displayed on TVs around the room and the surgeon even let me see through the laparoscope at one moment.”
In October, Senior-year students began to do direct care at Summa Hospital at the Barberton campus as well as Pleasant View, a nursing home also in Barberton.
“[The students] Take vital signs in the Emergency Department, give direct patient care, observe in the Operating room, and Care for patients in all departments, such as medical, surgical, and intensive care,” said Cynthia Bowell, the Senior ATN teacher. “Students will also travel to Akron City to observe Labor and Delivery.”
In October, each senior student was assigned a resident at Pleasant View and will spend multiple hours a month with them as the year progresses. Then, at the end of the school year, they will do a capstone presentation about their resident and their hospital experiences in front of the nursing home members, the resident’s family, and the student’s family.
The students will continue their school year by getting hands-on experience that will help them in their future careers.
“Students get to perform patient care on patients at both the hospital and nursing care facility in their senior year and perform skills that a certified nursing assistant would be able to,” Taylor said.
At the end of this program, students will graduate with many licenses and certifications, including CPR, First Aid, OSHA-10, Certified Nursing Assistant 9, Certified Phlebotomy Technician, and Home Health Aide.
The senior students will graduate in May and expressed gratitude for the program’s contribution to their future successes.
“I would definitely recommend this program to anyone considering a career in health care,” Abby Perkins said. “Though there is a large workload and it can be difficult at times, I truly think it sets us up for success in the future [and] I am grateful for this program and the relationships made.”
