Nightingale nurses enjoy the perks of college life

Special to The Leader

BEAUMONT – Students from Bridge City and Orange were among participants from 18 Southeast Texas high schools who visited Lamar University and two area hospitals last weekend for the Nightingale Experience, learning first hand what lies ahead for them in nursing careers.

“I love this experience,” said Bridge City High School student Valerie Brown. “I was deciding between  nursing and dental, but from what I’m learning here, I really want to go into nursing now.”

Lamar’s JoAnne Gay Dishman Department of Nursing joined CHRISTUS Hospital St. Elizabeth and St. Mary to host the session, now in its sixth year. CHRISTUS provides the financial resources to stage the event.

“It’s very interesting to me because I want to be a traveling nurse,” said Catelyn Myers of Bridge City. “It’s helping me learn more about it and how to get where I need to be.”

Students from West Orange-Stark High School also attended the sessions.

The Nightingale Experience enabled students to practice their nursing skills in both professional and educational settings — Friday in the McFaddin Ward Health Sciences Building at Lamar and at St. Mary in Port Arthur and Saturday at St. Elizabeth in Beaumont. To enjoy the Lamar experience — as well as the Nightingale Experience — students stayed at Cardinal Village.

 At Lamar, the students spent much of their time in the Edna Horn Gay Nursing Laboratory, where they learned about IVs, injections, phlebotomy, vital signs and naso-gastric tube insertion. They even “delivered” a baby – thanks to a simulated labor and delivery room complete with mother and infant.

Eileen Curl, professor and chair of the nursing department, led the Nightingale Experience, assisted by Gina Hale, instructor of nursing, and 28 college students from the nursing department.

“Simulations are great for teaching because we can always make sure we have the disease process occurring in the patient at the same time we are teaching about it,” Curl said.

Instructor Leslie Brown was among faculty members guiding students through the Nightingale Experience. Unlike in a hospital setting, she said, “Here, you can mess up, and we can teach you from there. We teach every single thing you will need to do — step by step.”

Moving on to St. Mary, students used a defibrillator on a mannequin experiencing a heart attack, learned how to fix a hip fracture and treated a trauma patient in the emergency room. At St. Elizabeth the next day, they practiced being scrub nurses in the operating room, learned about fetal heart tones and computerized medical records and experienced being in traction.

There was also time to make aspects of nursing entertaining with the blindfold bed-making contest and the nursing uniform design contest, both on the Lamar campus. 

  The program introduces high school students to nursing and the job opportunities available in the profession, Curl said. “By visiting both St. Elizabeth and St. Mary campuses of CHRISTUS, students obtain insights about a wide range of clinical specialty areas students can pursue.”

 High schools participating in the event include Bridge City, Buna, Burkeville, Central, Community Christian, Evadale, Hamshire-Fannett, Kirbyville, Kountze, Legacy Christian Academy, Lumberton, Nederland, Ozen, Port Neches-Groves, Sabine Pass, Silsbee, West Orange-Stark and Woodville.

 Lamar nursing instructors work closely with area school counselors to identify high school sophomores who are interested in nursing and want to learn more about job opportunities within the field, Curl said. Counselors identify and nominate prospective participants before Lamar nursing instructors select the Nightingale candidates.