Columbus Grove High School brought its first class of seniors in the biomedical science classes on a tour of St. Rita’s Emergency Department, said Dave Hassen, high school science teacher.The students, in a medical innovations class, are working on designing a plan for their own ER.
This is the first time St. Rita’s has given a tour of its ER, said Robb Recker, the clinical operating director at St. Rita’s.
“They saw a lot things that, I think, none of us really considered were necessary as far as designing an emergency room and trying to be innovative and come up with good ideas. I think one of the problems … that we saw here, though, that there’s so many things they’ve already come up with it’s going to be hard for our kids to come up with things that are innovative still, which is kind of the idea, it’s kind of the intent,” Hassen said.
The tour included most of the aspects of the emergency department, which opened its renovated ER in February 2013, said Recker, the students’ tour guide for the trip.
Students learned about the planning behind the design of parts of the department such as the nurses station and the patient rooms. For example, the nurses station was designed to give nurses a good line of sight into the patient rooms.
Dylan Owen said he found the nurses station to be very innovative. This is Owen’s first time taking a tour of the hospital. His dream is to start a hospital somewhere where people need one, maybe abroad.
Recker also showed students parts of the emergency room that are geared toward the families of the patient, such as a family waiting room next to the department’s bigger, resuscitation rooms and the family consult room, so family members of a dead or dying patient can go to a place that is quiet and does not have a clinical feel to hear about and deal with the news. The consult room also includes another room where the patient can be taken in and the family can be with the patient in private.
Rachel Kohls said she learned a lot about what goes into creating an emergency room. She will be focused on staffing for her project so her notes focused on that, she said. Kohls said she hopes to pursue a career in a pharmaceutical field.
Students were challenged by the technology the ER has. Recker showed students, among other technology, the medicine cabinets kept in patient rooms to save the time going to the stock room and back. The cabinets can only be opened by a staff member pressing their fingerprint against the censor.
When Recker was deciding what to show the students on the tour, he said he tried to find the unique parts of the department to highlight for the students. He saw the tour as a good opportunity to show the ER to students, a department he is very proud of.
“The students had great questions, they were very engaged and overall it was a great experience, not only for me but I think the students really liked it as well,” Recker said.
The 13 students have taken four years of biomedical classes, Hassen said, and all are pretty committed to a career in a health care field, such as nursing or pharmacy.
©2014 The Lima News (Lima, Ohio)
