Area high school students explore medical careers

Published 7:30 am Thursday, June 22, 2017

Isabelle Sauers held a Doppler pulse check instrument in her right hand and a tube of ultrasound contact gel in her left.

After squirting a glob of gel onto her patient’s wrist, she set the instrument’s wand on the gel. Immediately, the patient’s pulse was amplified on the Doppler. Then a digital pulse reading displayed on the screen.

“It’s about 80. That’s in the normal range,” Sauers told the young woman.

Sauers, 17, a senior at Elgin High School, is among 36 high school students who tried hands-on medical activities at the OHSU School of Nursing on the Eastern Oregon University campus Tuesday afternoon.

This week, these students are participating in the 25th annual MedQuest Health Career Exploration Camp organized by Northeast Oregon Area Health Education Center, located on EOU’s campus.

MedQuest is a comprehensive week-long look at many careers in health care. The camp is held on the campus of EOU and the surrounding community, and the students stay in dorms. The camp is open to high school students completing grades 9 through 12 who are considering medical careers. Students paid $400 to attend, which included all lodging, food, activities and supplies. A limited number of scholarships were available.

This year’s camp enrollment of 36 students is the largest group in the program’s 25-year history. Last year there were 28 students. Although most students are from Eastern Oregon, others come from as far away as Ashland and Coos Bay.

The seven Union County students participating in the camp are Kimberly Wagner and Nova Barton, of La Grande; Bonny Daggett, Hannah Kilpatrick and Cade Gorham, of Imbler; and Hailey Hanson and Sauers, of Elgin.

“I’m pretty set on going into the medical field,” Sauers said. “This camp is broadening my spectrum of what I want to be.”

In the same clinical skills lab, other MedQuest students practiced procedures on two nursing simulation mannequins lying in hospital beds.

Dorothy Hancock, OHSU clinical instructor for the skills lab, explained the myriad procedures students could perform on the mannequins.

“We can take blood pressure, start IVs on them, put catheters on their bladder, drain the catheters, use a stethoscope to listen to their heart,” Hancock said.

The students listened carefully, then took up the instruments and went to work.

MedQuest students were chosen from a pool of more than 60 candidates from across Oregon. They were selected based on factors like their GPA, extracurricular involvement, essay and passion for the health care field. All students have shown an interest in health careers, and most arrive at camp with at least some health career experience, whether it’s job shadowing or a CPR class.

“They all have some basic knowledge we can expand upon,” said Meredith Lair, director of Northeast Oregon Area Health Education Center.

Week of medical experiences

Throughout the week, students are exposed to medical experiences and participate in hands-on learning. On Monday afternoon, Union County Emergency Services Manager J.B. Brock, a volunteer with Union County Search and Rescue, led a wilderness response emergency rescue at Mount Emily Recreation Area. He taught students how to tie knots essential in wilderness rescue and then demonstrated how to use a ropes rescue to pull a person up a hill on a stretcher.

Tuesday morning, students boarded a bus to Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton and toured the cadaver lab to learn basic anatomy and physiology.

“I was really excited about the cadaver lab,” said Gorham, 17, a senior at Imbler High School. “I didn’t think I’d get to see that in high school.”

Today, students will tour the Life Flight base as well as Grande Ronde Hospital and its operating room. The hospital has been a partner in the camp since its inception.

Each student also is customizing a job shadow based on personal interests and will spend time at work with a health care provider.

Daggett, 17, also from Imbler High School, plans to become a pediatric nurse. She said she was looking forward to doing a job shadow at the women’s clinic Thursday.

“It’s hard to job shadow in the medical fields around here unless you’re in college,” Daggett said.

MedQuest students also will become certified in American Heart Association Heartsaver CPR and automated external defibrillator training at the camp. Intermixed throughout the week, providers representing a variety of medical specialties will talk with students about pathways required for that medical career.

Lair said several former MedQuest students pursued medical and health care careers. They include Stephen Koza, a dentist at Koza Family Dental Care in La Grande, and John Combe, a licensed massage therapist who owns Combe’s Wellness Center in La Grande. Combe also travels to athletic competitions to provide sports therapy to world-class track and field athletes. This week, he is at the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships in Sacramento, California.

In addition, several former MedQuest students now are nurses either at Grande Ronde Hospital or teaching at the OHSU School of Nursing. A couple of former MedQuest students are first-year medical students at OHSU in Portland.

Stephanie George, 22, was a MedQuest student six years ago when she was a sophomore at Enterprise High School. Now, she’s entering her senior year of nursing school and is a lead counselor for the MedQuest camp. She said the camp helped her fine-tune what she wanted to pursue.