Nursing Camp Gives Teenagers Early Exposure

By the end of the week, Heidy Rodriguez will know how to check a patient’s blood pressure, temperature and pulse. She’ll know her way around the operating room, intensive-care unit and maternity ward. She’ll learn how to calm infants and comfort the elderly.

Then she’ll go back to junior high.

Thirteen-year-old Heidy is spending a rigorous two weeks at a day camp designed to expose preteens and young teenagers to the nursing profession.

“I never thought you could make a bed with someone in it!” she said, marveling at the skills she’s learned in just a few days.

“It’s really exciting. I thought nurses just gave shots, but it’s so much more. Nurses do everything.”

Although specialized summer camps are nothing new, they usually target older teens. But the nursing camp’s creators at St. Anselm College wanted to help young students focus on their futures before they reach high school.

“We think we’re doing kids a favor by telling them, ‘The world is your oyster,’ but what we hear is they’re overwhelmed by choices,” said Sylvia Durette, a faculty member at the college and the camp’s director. “We want to them to know more about themselves, and we want them to know more about nursing.”

A similar camp -- for boys only -- operates in South Carolina, and a two-day camp for preteen boys and girls is in Ohio.

At this Manchester camp, which has no formal name, bandaging and bed-making replace arts and crafts. There are no campfires or sing-alongs, but plenty to keep the campers -- 27 girls and one boy -- busy.

Classroom instruction is offered at the college campus, plus there are trips to area medical facilities where campers practice their skills. Although one long-term goal is to ease the state’s nursing shortage, short-term benefits abound -- the campers are learning empathy and communication skills, and they’re having fun.

Dressed in blue scrubs with stethoscopes slung around their necks, one group of girls spent a morning making beds at Hanover Hill Health Care Center and helping residents with their lunches.

“Gross!” one girl says when Heidy returns from a room where a patient recently died. But Heidy is calm, mature. She points to the signs outside each room that have pictures of each resident.

“I wanted to see who it was, but they were already taking her picture down,” she said.

Bridget Lynch, a St. Anselm senior, licensed practical nurse and camp counselor, said she hopes that even campers who decide nursing isn’t for them will leave with a new respect for themselves and others.

“These girls didn’t know how much heart and love they have in them,” she said.

“More than anything, they need this hands-on time. It builds their self-esteem and confidence.”

Campers pay nothing for the two-week session, thanks to the Manchester School to Career Partnership, which received a state grant to connect kids to careers in health care.

“Everyone is talking about the nursing shortage, but concrete projects were far and few between,” said Clint Jones, business liaison for the partnership.

According to a recent study by the nonprofit corporation Foundation for Healthy Communities, New Hampshire is producing only half the nursing graduates it needs to battle the shortage. The number of registered nurses in New Hampshire is expected to increase by 5.5% by 2006, half of the projected 11% national increase.

Nursing homes have a particularly tough time recruiting nurses and aides. The American Health Care Assn. estimates that more than 123,000 nursing positions are vacant at long-term care facilities throughout the country.

Although it will be years before any of the campers enter the work force, Ted Lee, president of Hanover Hill, said they will be worth waiting for. The home, which has started to recruit nurses and aides overseas, relished the opportunity to show the campers a variety of career opportunities, he said.

“It was a wonderful opportunity to get kids in here at an early age,” he said. “They can see there’s a future in it.”

Many campers had never been in a nursing home before. But they soon overcame their shyness.

“Old people are so cool!” said 14-year-old Katie Silveria of Loudon, who quickly corrected herself, substituting “elderly” for “old.”

Although some of her friends teased her about attending the camp, Katie said she thoroughly enjoyed herself.

“I used to think it was doctors doing everything,” she said. “Now I know the nurses do everything.”