HIRAM: Oscar Mejia had a hands-on experience Wednesday that he is not likely to forget.
“I don’t think I’ll ever have a chance to do something like that again. I actually got to touch human tissue and bones,” said Oscar, a junior at Twinsburg High School. “The bone was a lot harder than I thought it would be — it was really dense. The tissue even felt differently than I thought it would; it was kind of slimy.”
Oscar, 17, was among 200 Northeast Ohio high school students touring a surgical suite on wheels at Hiram College’s Hiram Health Spring event. The mobile operating room, the fair’s centerpiece, was provided by Hiram alumnus Rick Anthony, president of Surgical Training Institute LLC.
“We take these units across the country to train surgeons and medical staff, helping them to keep current with new procedures and technology,” said Anthony, a Cleveland native. “When we do events like this, we give students an opportunity to see what it’s really like to be a surgeon and hopefully help grow their interest in the medical field and help them understand the complexity of it.”
Helping students get a real feel for what it would be like to perform surgery was the motivation for Nora Suder-Riley in encouraging her anatomy students to experience the mobile medical unit, where doctors demonstrated procedures for correcting carpal tunnel, meniscus tears and ACL injuries on cadaver parts.
“I hope this will help them make decisions for the future. This is a hands-on experience that can help them determine if this is something they would like to do, if it’s something that they can handle, if it’s something that excites them or brings out their passion,” said Suder-Riley, a science teacher at Twinsburg High School. “If it’s not something they find attractive, they can rule it out. It’s as important to know that it is not something you want to do as it is to know it’s something you would like to do.”
A game changer
Both Carlee Krause and Kayla Grubbs, sophomores at the Bio-Med Science Academy on the Northeast Ohio Medical University campus in Rootstown, discerned that the life of a surgeon was not for them.
“It was odd, seeing limbs — an arm and a leg — apart from a body,” said Kayla, 16, of Rootstown. “It was cool to be able to see the tendons and muscles, but being a surgeon is not something I want to do. I think I’ll keep my interest in sports medicine or being a large animal veterinarian.”
Kayla’s classmate, Carlee, of Mantua, said she had no interest in touching the body parts and could not see herself performing surgery every day.
“I was a little nervous when I walked in, and I was not prepared to see doctors actually doing procedures,” said Carlee, 16. “It was interesting, but it confirmed for me that doing occupational therapy, working with children with Down syndrome is a better career for me.”
Array of options
In addition to the mobile surgical unit, the health fair included yoga lessons, martial arts demonstrations, body composition assessments, sleep quizzes and beer goggles, which gave students a simulated experience of what it would feel like to walk, drive and function under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
The goal of the day was to give prospective students a look at health professions and to celebrate Hiram’s humanistic approach to health education. It was also an opportunity to highlight how an undergraduate degree from Hiram can lead to graduate programs at partner institutions NEOMED and Case Western Reserve University.
“We are meshing medical education with the humanities to include things like bioethics and compassionate caregiving and starting new programs like exercise science and a community health program,” said Sandra Madar, professor of biology and biomedical humanities at Hiram. “We are training students to learn how to live well — physically, spiritually and mentally. Being well means to decrease stress, be active and be social.”
Lexi Pizzuto, a senior at Twinsburg High School, said the day left her feeling confident about her decision to attend the University of Pittsburgh this fall to pursue a career in pediatrics.
“It was a good day. It was more hands-on than I expected, which was great. I tried the beer goggles and that didn’t work out to well. I couldn’t walk in a straight line and I ended up crashing,” said Lexi, 18. “The mobile medical unit was awesome. They let us touch the cartilage in the leg. This visit validated my decision to be a doctor.”
Lexi’s classmate, Oscar, agreed that the surgical unit experience was the most influential in confirming his interest in becoming a pediatrician.
“I was really inspired listening to the doctors explain what they were doing and allowing us to have some hands-on experience,” Oscar said. “This has really been eye-opening.”
Colette Jenkins can be reached at 330-996-3731 or cjenkins@thebeaconjournal.com. She can be followed at www.twitter.com/ColetteMJenkins.