Area students experience health care thrills and drills during MASH camp at Mercy

Jul. 1—They bumped around in wheelchairs, walked through the interior of an ambulance, placed goo on their wrists to listen to their heartbeats, and trekked through the basement at Mercy Hospital Joplin to see how the lights stay on and the rooms above their heads stay cool.

Thirty-three high school students from the Joplin area participated in Mercy's MASH camp Wednesday, back for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For seven hours, the students visited every part of the hospital, including an intensive care unit and a mock operating room.

Overall, the camp offers students a feel for what it might be like to work as a professional in the health care field, giving them fun, hands-on activities in most of the hospital's major areas.

The students said they were impressed by what they experienced.

"The more that I see in the hospital, the more it makes me want to go into health care," said 15-year-old Madelyn Kennedy, a sophomore at Carthage High School. "I've always wanted to" be a pediatric nurse, "but now I'm like, 'This is for sure what I want to do.'"

Watching doctors and nurses use their skills to ease anxiety and pain in numerous patients, she said: "I just really want to help people."

The high school students made their way from one major department to another, absorbing what they saw and heard from doctors, nurses and technicians. They visiting imaging rooms, used an ultrasound pulse check on themselves, tried to navigate around obstacles in wheelchairs or on crutches, and visited the hospital's mock scrub lab, where certified clinical technologist Sydney Nyman told them that starting out as a tech was a good way for them to get their foot in the door.

"It's a very fun job, it's a very humbling job. You're going to meet a lot of people in all different stages of life," she told the students surrounding her. "I've helped babies. I've helped say goodbye to people. I've done a lot of organ procurements — I've done a lot of stuff."

But above all else, she warned them: "You treat every patient the same, no matter what their background is or where they come from; it does not matter. You are here to save your patient's life as much as you can."

More than half the students indicated they wanted to work professionally in health care, something that wasn't lost on Joe Craigmile, Mercy's manager of client services.

"Mercy is concerned about the health care for the area, so any of these students who end up working in health care anywhere in the (Joplin area) helps tremendously," he said, noting there's a deficit of doctors and nurses nationwide. "If we can attract these kid's attention to medicine, and they want to stay close to home where they grew up, that's great."

Dr. Evan Clark was a MASH camp participant who went on to college and medical school and now practices emergency medicine at Mercy, so the camp experience does work, said Angela Kennedy, Mercy's medical education manager.

The camp, she said, which dates back to when St. John's Regional Medical Center was in operation, "is a great way for students to step into the world of health care in a way that's fun and interactive. ... We hope the event sparks a passion for science and health care in the students and inspires them to consider a career in the health sciences."

Shayaan Anis, a 15-year-old sophomore at Thomas Jefferson Independent Day School, said he learned a healthy respect for those working inside a hospital.

"I have never realized how much work goes into actually running a hospital, from the doctors to the people who work on the electrical (systems) down in the basement," he said. "I have much respect for them, and they do so much for society and we'd be nowhere without them.

"This is definitely something I want to do when I'm older," Anis said.