Last month, Columbia State Community College’s nursing program in partnership with Saint Thomas Health Regional Network (STHRN) held its first Nursing IV Cardiac Symposium in Spring Hill.
Approximately 60 fourth-semester nursing students from Columbia and Williamson County campuses attended the day-long symposium, in which they participated in an interactive case study, patient simulations and lectures.
These students will soon be registered nurses and the symposium helped prepare them to care for heart patients and provide patient education during the acute and recovery periods for patients experiencing angina or myocardial infarction. By working with Saint Thomas Hospital educations and Air Evac, they were challenged to recognize the signs and symptoms of ACS during a cardiac simulation involving a patient who was experiencing a heart attack. Students worked together to quickly diagnose and treat the patient.
“We were able to put together what we learned in the textbook and lecture and apply it to the hands-on scenario,” said Jalene Holeman of Spring Hill. “We walked through the process together as though the patient had just arrived in the emergency department. As a team, we hit on all the different points of what medications, what allergies, and what the medical history was.”
The symposium was made possible through a grant awarded to the STHRN by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources. The grant was established in order to develop and promote innovative educational strategies for recruitment and retention of health care workers, motivating them to seek employment in rural communities.
The Northfield Workforce Development and Conference Center in Spring Hill provided the meeting space as part of the partnership established with Columbia State and the EMS/Paramedic and Advanced Integrated Industrial Technology programs.
There are hopes that this will be a repeated delivery each semester for fourth-semester nurses, as it gets them out of the classroom and using their critical thinking skills to identify symptoms and apply proper care.
Pictured above: Summertown resident, Molly Tucker examines the lung simulator set up by Saint Thomas Health representative, Robin Barnett.
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