Sassy Scrubs News - Healthcare Heroes Get Kid’s Eye View of Medicine

Healthcare Heroes Get Kid’s Eye View of Medicine

Robinson Memorial Hospital is hosting its third annual Healthcare Heroes Camp the week of June 19. Twenty Portage County students, aged eight to 13, will have an opportunity to find out what happens at their community hospital via daily explorations. The children will get to visit patient care departments such as surgery, the Emergency Department, cardiology and Children’s at Robinson, plus behind-the-scenes departments such as the central sterile, engineering and medical records.

“This is the age at which children begin to set their dreams for what they want to be when they grow up,” said Debbie Wilcox, Director of Community Relations and Volunteer Services. This very interactive program helps to prepare for the future of healthcare by introducing children to medical careers. “Most kids think that you have to be a nurse or a doctor to work in a hospital, so we want to expose them to the whole field of healthcare opportunities.”

The campers will be dressed in their very own Sassy Scrubs throughout the week, and will have their own patient chart to track their progress through the camp. They will have a variety of opportunities to get hands-on experience in several areas: including first aid scavenger hunts; exploring ambulances and med-flight helicopters; visiting the rehabilitation pool, wearing heart monitors, and learning how to use stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs and other diagnostic procedures. They also get to spend some quality time with the hospital’s furry volunteers – the Love on a Leash therapy dogs.

“We want them to be excited about their career possibilities in healthcare, as well as helping to address the projected healthcare worker shortages,” Wilcox explained.

Healthcare heroes By Jason De Leon Record-Courier staff writer

Most times, when a child learns something new, his or her parent or guardian gets to learn, as well.

The third annual Robinson Memorial Hospital Healthcare Heroes Camp concluded last week and families of the camp participants were invited to a closing reception to see for themselves what Heroes Camp was all about.

The week-long camp attended by 20 Portage County students ages 8 to 13 gave an in-depth, behind-the-scenes view of Robinson Memorial in Ravenna.

Each day the campers put on scrubs and grabbed their charts to learn about in surgery, the Emergency Department, cardiology, Children’s at Robinson, medical records, central sterile and engineering.

“I have never been injured before, thank goodness,” said Megan Piccione, a sixth-grader at the Miller South School for Visual and Performing Arts in Akron. “So I signed up for the camp because I wanted to know what goes on in the hospital.”

Many campers and volunteers chose to do the camp because they have future career goals in the field of healthcare services.

“I want to get a degree in nursing,” said Corey Myers, a Heroes Camp volunteer and a junior at Ravenna High School. “I liked meeting all the different kids and seeing the different departments of the hospital. All the kids really liked it. If they had the chance to come back next year, I think they would.”

Following the completion of Corey’s volunteering for the camp he will return to volunteering on the nurses’ floor and will work part-time in the kitchen at Robinson Memorial.

Camp participant Taylor Wise, a seventh-grader at Southeast Local Schools, has concrete aspirations about entering the healthcare services field.

“I want to be a nurse,” Taylor said. “Now I know more about what they do. The cardio-vascular activity was my favorite. I never knew there was four parts to the heart.”

There was so much to do, with learning different aspects of the hospital, said Taylor’s grandma, Rosalie Shultz, a Deerfield resident.

“I was impressed that something like this is offered by the hospital,” Shultz said. “I think it gives parents the opportunity to learn something.”

For the Gordon family of Paris, they got to hear stories every day from camper Spencer Gordon, a fifth-grader at Southeast.

“He loved it,” Spencer’s father, Whitney Gordon said. “I think the camp opens their eyes to what they can do in the future.”

Robinson Memorial director of community relations and volunteer services Debbie Wilcox and camp volunteer Stephanie Dean, a junior at Roosevelt High School, agreed that the more and more that campers were exposed to the hospital, the less shy they were by the end of the week.

“In the beginning of the week the kids were shy,” Stephanie said. “It was nice to see them grow and see their reaction to each department. I love volunteering and getting to act behind the scenes of the hospital. My dad is a doctor, so I grew up in the medical field and I really like it. I want to be a nurse.”

At the reception families watched a slide show of the weeks’ events, listened to campers’ favorite activities and witnessed the unveiling of a collective artwork, completed by the campers throughout the week.

The artwork will be framed and displayed at Robinson Memorial.

Unfortunately, Sassy Scrubs is no longer able to carry Kids Scrubs due to the prohibitive regulations enacted by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008.