A few high school students stood around mannequins in the simulation lab at the School of Nursing, some giggling at the anguished wails abruptly coming from one mannequin and others singing “Stayin’ Alive” as they performed chest compressions on a mannequin’s torso.
Gina Grace Huh and Charlotte Havens, two nurse practitioner (NP) students who use this space as part of their training, had just explained CPR to the five high schoolers listening attentively from swivel stools. Huh and Havens walked the students through the method of giving 30 chest compressions—with one’s body weight behind them—for every two breaths delivered with the bag valve mask.
CPR training was one of three hands-on activities for a group of 15 students from William L. Sayre High School, Paul Robeson High School, and Mastery Charter Shoemaker Campus, all University-Assisted Community Schools supported by Penn’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships. The students were learning more about careers in nursing and other health care fields. With several NP students facilitating, they also used training stethoscopes to listen to different lung sounds on another mannequin and visited a mock home care suite down the hall.
This was the first annual nursing simulation event for local high school students and the latest addition to the Educational Pipeline Program, a collaborative initiative facilitated by the Netter Center that exposes West Philadelphia youth to a variety of careers in medical fields.
An educational pipeline
The Educational Pipeline Program began in 1998 in the Perelman School of Medicine, merged with the Netter Center in 2003, and later expanded to include the School of Veterinary Medicine, Center for Public Health (CPH), and Vagelos Program in Life Sciences & Management (LSM).
The goal is for students to stay in the program during all four years of high school. Participants go to career-exposure events in the fall; attend classes in the spring at Penn with Penn Medicine, Penn Vet, and LSM students; and conduct youth-driven public health research at Penn in the summer with support from CPH.
Jill Tabachnick Levi, Educational Pipeline coordinator for the Netter Center, said a lot of students who joined the Pipeline have expressed an interest in nursing. She began working with June Treston, who has been teaching at Penn for 25 years and is director of the Family Nurse Practitioner track.
“We partner with the Netter Center to really get out into the community and encourage health care and nursing as a career,” Treston said. She noted that nursing is unique because there are so many ways to start practicing without a college degree and that she has worked with many people who started out as a certified nursing assistant or EMT.
Robeson High School senior JT Torres Green, a longtime Pipeline student who wants to be a doctor, commented before the simulation event, “I’m interested in the medical field. I came to this program because a lot of my friends want to become nurses.”
Al’ilm Bateman, a sophomore at Mastery Shoemaker who is already certified in CPR, said later that she liked the event and that she wants to be a doula or home health care worker. “I just like helping people and giving them the care they deserve,” she said.
Levi said her colleagues at the Netter Center have developed programming beyond the Pipeline to encourage nursing and to support aspiring nurses. For example, seven Robeson students spent seven weeks shadowing nurses last year through the Penn Presbyterian Career Mentoring Program, and that initiative is continuing this year. Levi is also working to help an aspiring nurse get dual enrollment at the Community College of Philadelphia so the high school student can get prerequisite science courses completed.
The program is designed to create a pathway from idea to outcome, Levi said. “We’re really trying to bridge wanting to be a nurse, exposing what a nurse looks like, and then giving tangible outcomes to our students so they’re on that correct trajectory.”
Showing a love of nursing
A group of six NP students came up with activities and then coordinated and taught the event: Huh, Havens, Linda Ruggiero, Sarah Squillace, Breshay Woods, and Linda Chen. The students organized the session for their Civic Engagement Project as part of the Professional Role Issues for Nurse Practitioners class that Treston is teaching.
Treston explained that she created the Civic Engagement Project to help students understand that their role as primary care providers goes beyond the clinical setting. In the program, students create innovative solutions to address social determinants of health in the community, she said. Some students in Treston’s class also visited local high schools to provide mentorship and education about nursing careers, an initiative that began last year in partnership with the Netter Center.
During the high school visit to the simulation lab, Woods and Chen guided students through an exercise in listening to breath sounds on a mannequin. They explained that his heart rate and respiratory rate were high, providing additional bits and pieces of information about the patient until the students could figure out what was wrong.
In a room down the hall with a TV, lamp, bed, table, and couch, Ruggiero and Squillace talked about how home care workers help with cleaning and laundry, make sure patients are taking their medication correctly, and ensure the home is safe and devoid of tripping hazards.
Squillace said about participating in the simulation event, “I’m always interested in showing people: This is what I do, and I think it’s really great, and I’d love to tell you about it. I love being a nurse, and I want to show young people how great it is.”
Before the high school students split into groups for the hands-on activities, Ruggiero gave a brief presentation summarizing the roles and responsibilities of 13 health care careers: registered nurse, licensed practical nurse, certified nursing assistant, nurse practitioner, certified nurse midwife, nurse researcher, nurse educator, forensic nurse, travel nurse, nurse anesthetist, EMT, paramedic, and medical assistant.
Corinne Condie, another NP student volunteering at the event, said not knowing the details of something can make it seem out of reach, and so she hopes the students come away with an interest in nursing “but also a sense of curiosity.”
