‘Nurse Camp’

Photo by clare jensen

CAREER LESSON. Tacoma high school students Nathan Schibig, Vianey Rosas and Laura Kjellesvik (left to right) work with pig hearts during a cardiovascular session during day one of Nurse Camp at Tacoma General Hospital.

Pierce County teens got a taste of their possible futures this week as they stormed the halls of hospitals throughout the region.

As part of MultiCare Health System’s sixth year of Nurse Camp, about 100 students were able to get exposed to all aspects of health careers within the hospital setting during a four-day interactive tour July 7-10.

“Nurse Camp helps us show the other careers out there in health care...that people might not even realize are out there because they haven’t been exposed to them,” said Toph Matthews, who has been a registered nurse for close to 30 years and has worked in the nurse camp program for five. “People came in thinking they want to be a doctor – they didn’t realize nurses spent more time with the patients.”

Matthews expresses to his nursing protégés the opportunity for growth and change within the field. The long-time registered nurse shifted between seven types of nursing during his career and is now the director of pediatric surgical services at Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital.

“I always knew that I wanted to help care for people in a hospital setting. I wish I had something like Nurse Camp to help me know early on the different types of nursing that are out there.”

During the camp, students get to see all departments within the hospital, from all facets of doctors and nurses, health educators, engineers, linen services and so on.

They also are able to shadow nurses and other health care professionals while they do their daily jobs, tour local nursing programs at college campuses, perform mock surgical routines and formulate legislative strategies regarding health care policy.

“It’s a great opportunity for students to see what’s out there, what’s available,” he said. “They’re really hyped at the end of it. Most of the students have an inkling that they want to do health care (when they start at Nurse Camp) and at the end, we see more of a commitment.”

Many of the students at this year’s camp knew they wanted to work in the health care field, but they were not sure exactly what that meant for them. Attendees used Nurse Camp as an exploratory tool to sharpen their ambitions in health care.

In recent years the country has faced a nursing shortage, which was one prompt for Nurse Camp to start six years ago.

Organizers hoped that getting more people exposed to health care, especially nursing careers, at younger ages could increase and diversify the nursing workforce.

While no data is currently available that illustrates the number of local Nurse Camp graduates who will actually pursue nursing, several nurses from the first batch of Nurse Camp students in 2003 have come back to work for the company they got their start at in high school.

“We have a huge shortage of nurses,” said Liesl Santkuyl, community outreach liaison for MultiCare Center For Healthy Living. “We are trying to create an excitement around nursing…and get kids excited about health care. We have a big workforce retiring.”

The interest in nursing and the health field has definitely grown among local high school students over the years.

The first year, Nurse Camp graduated 30 ninth through 12th-grade participants. This year, 100 students spent four days of their summer vacation in scrubs. Out of those students, 50 percent were from racial minority and non English-language backgrounds and 20 were males.

“This is the biggest contingency of males (at Nurse Camp) that I’ve seen,” said Karin Gehrke, a registered nurse for 26 years and a Nurse Camp committee member for four.

And more than double the amount of students applied for the competitive program than who were accepted.

Students who do not make the cut are encouraged to reapply each year they are still in high school.

“We want to give the community an opportunity to send as many students into the program as we can,” Gehrke said. “If they think they’re interested in nursing, and they see that they like it, we’ll have won them over way before they’re even done with high school.

“It’s a benefit. It benefits us and it benefits them.”

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