CPTC Offers Nurse Camp Students a Glimpse at Health Care Options

The Clover Park Technical College health sciences programs welcomed a group of 26 guests on July 20 as part of MultiCare’s annual Nurse Camp program.

Nurse Camp is a week-long program for local high school sophomores and juniors interested in working as a nurse or allied health professional. The week includes education, observation and participation at various local medical facilities. Thursday afternoon, that included a rotation three different CPTC programs and a tour of the college’s health services building.

“CPTC allied health has been involved in Nurse Camp for about 10 years,” CPTC Nursing Programs Director Myra Griffin said. “Each summer a group of the camp participants comes to Clover Park to learn about the different allied health programs we have to offer.”

The three different program sessions involved Nursing, Hemodialysis and Pharmacy Technician. The Pharmacy Technician stop included combining different ingredients to make sample medications; the Hemodialysis stop included working with the dialysis machines and practicing running an intravenous line; while the Nursing stop gave students the chance to carry out a simulated birth.

“This year I brought out one of our maternity simulation mannequins to actively engage them in the experience of delivering a baby,” CPTC Nursing instructor David Bahrt said. “What I didn’t realize was that many of them had shadowed hospital nurses in the labor/delivery environment earlier in the day, and some hadn’t seen the process through to completion. For them to have the opportunity to see the end of that process and be an active part in it was a great experience.”

The final rotation spot included a tour of CPTC’s various health services training facilities to give students an up-close view of some of the tools they can use to prepare for a career in health services. Several of the stops gave the Nurse Camp students a chance to interact with CPTC students, and plenty of opportunities are available to ask questions of the CPTC faculty.

“It’s always exciting and amazing to help out with Nurse Camp because you get an opportunity to meet the health care providers of the future, sometimes before they even know that they want to enter that career field,” Bahrt said. “They may have pieces of the puzzle – they love science, they want to help people, they know someone in a health care-related field – but sometimes it’s the direct exposure to what a college program can provide that gives them understanding about what those pieces mean to them. It gives them a view of the big picture, and I love that Nurse Camp helps high schoolers to see the big picture and have it make sense, to help them realize that they’ve found their future.”

On the final day of the week-long camp, CPTC Nursing program staff attended the career/college fair to share CPTC allied health information with all Nurse Camp participants, including those who were not part of the group that visited CPTC.