Nursing and Healthcare Camp | Webster Kirkwood Times

For about 20 area high school students, summer camp means being inside a helicopter rather than roasting marshmallows around a fire.

That’s because the 20 students are taking part in Webster University’s inaugural “Exploring Nursing and Healthcare” summer camp, a five-day program aimed at high school students who want to pursue a nursing career.

Last Friday afternoon, to mark the final day of camp, students gathered in the parking lot in front of Webster University’s Browning Interdisciplinary Sciences Building to watch an ARCH Air Medical ambulance helicopter land. An ambulance from the Webster Groves Fire Department was also on scene. Students had the opportunity to tour the helicopter, observe procedures and speak with crew members from both ambulances.

Among the young candidates seeking nursing positions were McKenzie Jobe, Mary Weimer and Savannah Zehnder, who live in Webster Groves and Kirkwood.

Jobe, who will be a senior at Webster Groves High School, said the camp gave her a great overview of careers that can branch out from nursing, and she’s now considering a career she previously thought was impossible: becoming an anesthesiologist.

“I hate needles,” Jobe said, “but I was fascinated by doing epidurals and spinal taps (on training mannequins), so now I want to be an anesthesiologist.”

Weimer, a senior at Webster Groves High School, said she has always been interested in the medical field and is looking to gain as much experience as possible before enrolling in a pre-med program at the University of Missouri next year.

She is grateful to the Experiential Learning Center at Webster Groves High School for alerting her to the nursing camp opportunity.

“A lot of camps like this tend to be lecture-based, but what I liked about this camp is that you get to experience everything yourself and really learn,” she said.

Zehnder, who will be a junior at Kirkwood High School this fall, has a family connection to the field as her mother is a physician at the University of Washington.

“When I told my mom I wanted to be a nurse, she looked into the programs and it sounded really fun, so I wanted to see what it was like,” Zehner said.

Reflecting on the whole experience, Zehner said she loved the camp.

“I’ve made a lot of friends and been able to experience a lot of things I never would have been able to see before,” she said.

Beyond the hospital walls

Leading the campers were Stephanie Driben and Cami Weber, two assistant professors in Webster University’s nationally renowned nursing program.

Weber, a nurse who will be in her fourth year of teaching at the university this fall, was the catalyst for the emergency helicopter landing. “This is an area of ​​medicine and nursing that people know exists but don’t know much about,” Weber said. “We want to show students that medicine exists beyond the walls of the hospital – in the community and in the air.” Weber said the idea for the camp had been discussed among faculty members for several years, but the recent national shortage of health care workers and the focus on getting young people interested in health care finally brought it to fruition.

Weber and Driben said they felt their camp was different from other summer programs offered in the area, noting that there aren’t many programs focused on nursing. With that in mind, they sought to make the camp unique by incorporating other medical disciplines in addition to nursing. They also brought in a wide range of guest speakers with backgrounds in different niches within the medical profession.

“I don’t know of any camp that has not only invited us but even sent a helicopter and an ambulance to come,” Driben said.

Camps like this certainly inspire students to pursue a career in medicine or health care professions. Chase Niewohner, who has worked as a flight nurse with ARCH Air Medical for the past seven years, said a summer nursing camp he attended as a student at Christian Brothers High School inspired him to pursue his current profession.

Professors Weber and Dribben are positive about continuing the camp next year and have seen positive feedback from camp participants. For both camp leaders, the most rewarding aspect has been being able to make a positive contribution to the medical community by inspiring future medical professionals.

“It was so gratifying for us to see the campers’ excitement at learning and practicing skills like giving injections and suturing,” Weber said. “Most of the campers seem to want to pursue a career in healthcare. They came away with a real understanding that a healthcare career is much more than just working in a hospital.”

Carson McDaniel, a recent graduate of Webster University, is working as a summer intern at the Webster Kirkwood Times..