By Alexis Victor ’11, Contributor
Have you ever found yourself wondering what it’s like to shadow a doctor? Or to study in a wilderness medical course? This summer four CCDS seniors did just exactly these things.
Kathryn Black ’11 shadowed an occupational therapist for three days and a colorectal surgeon at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for two days this past summer. Black said the therapist, who works with physically disabled or injured children, was “cool to work with because she would motivate the kids with toys and stickers,” making them move the sticker to a piece of paper on the wall or push a toy truck a certain distance. The colorectal surgeon that she shadowed, Dr. Marc Levitt, visited CCDS last year to talk about his line of work–Remember his videos of a burping stomach?!? One of the most interesting things Black saw while shadowing him was a surgical procedure, where she admitted to getting “a little dizzy.” “I’m interested in the medical path so I wanted to see more behind the scenes stuff and see what it was like,” she said. She said her summer was a “fun and rewarding experience.”
Jack Wildman ’11 was a counselor in training this summer at Camp Kooch-I-Ching, where he also worked as a Wilderness First Responder. Under the supervision of the nurse, Wildman and two other interns “acted as both primary care and emergency care providers who performed routine and emergency care for campers and staff.” Wildman had been preparing for this job since last winter, when he went to the University of Alabama at Birmingham on a grant from the Camping and Education Foundation. Wildman, who is one of the first to partake in this pilot program, took an 80 hour standard-practice course learning the necessary trauma, medicine, and risk management skills. “Red Cross teaches you what to do until 911 gets there,” Wildman said. But, his course went beyond the fundamentals to “deal with major and small injuries for more than two hours, when nobody is around to help immediately.” Wildman said working on the course with the other interns was fun, but it involved homework every night and a 100% passing grade to earn the certification.
When the time for camp arrived, Wildman was responsible for everything from checking campers’ physical condition once they arrived at camp, giving medicine, checking blood pressure and pulse, and treating any emergency situations. “There were no serious injuries while at camp, but I did have to care for one camper with serious second degree burns and another with a suspected broken arm,” Wildman said. “The only hard part is that there’s no way you can prepare for what’s going to happen at camp in a 10-day course, and since the camp is located on an island, I can’t just call 911. So I’m trained to maintain the injury until help arrives, which may be awhile later.” Overall, he said that, even though it was stressful at times, he enjoyed the challenge .“ I got the training, put the training into action, and helped the campers feel better, which was rewarding,” Wildman said. Because of Wildman’s success in the course, five more people are now also receiving training to become Wildness First Responders.
Finally, Tyrique Wilson’11 and Kate Taylor ’11 both participated in science-related paid programs at the University of Cincinnati this summer. Wilson did the Healthcare Exploration program, or HCARE, which was a six week program for rising seniors and soon-to-be college freshman from Cincinnati. “We got to UC at nine o’clock, did some medical labs and exercises, took tours of the hospital, shadowed doctors, got lunch, and then had class,” Wilson said. Some of the exercises Wilson did included working with dummies to learn how to draw blood, listen to a heartbeat, and care for the patient in general. Class work involved chemistry experiments, biology enrichment, and problem solving exercises. “We also got to go on a field trip to Ethicon, which is a company that makes surgical tools and machinery,” Wilson said. He is possibly interested in medicine and science, and says this helped him explore his options further to see if he’d like a job in the medical profession. “I’d recommend this summer course to anyone who is interested and science and medicine,” Wilson said.
Taylor did the UC program ExSEL, Excellence in Science, Education and Learning, which focused on different areas of biology. “It was a five week program and each week we studied a different biology subject: cancer and the cell cycle, neurology, protein structure, immunology, and genetics,” Taylor said. Like the HCARE program, this course was also for rising seniors and college freshman and involved lab work, lectures, classes, and a presentation at the end of each week. The labs involved everything from looking at fluorescent-dyed cells in a dark room, to growing bacteria from skin cells, and even slicing a human cadaver brain! Taylor also went on field trips to a genetics lab, where they saw a technician inject DNA into an embryo, an obesity research center, where they saw many fat mice, and a morgue, which, as she put it, “wasn’t the best part, but really the only bad thing about the entire course.” “I really liked immunology, where we did case studies, and the teachers would give us samples of diseased cells or water dyed to look like blood and we had to find out what disease the patient had. I felt like we were in an episode of House!” Taylor said. She learned a lot about basic lab techniques, like how to set up a lab, and recommends this course to anyone interested in science.
Photo courtesy of Jack Wildman ’11