Wallace State Nursing Hosts Let’s Pretend Hospital

HANCEVILLE, Ala. — “This was the best field trip ever,” said one student from Shelia Evans’s first-grade class at Hanceville Elementary, less than a week after they visited the zoo.
The 17 or so students in Mrs. Evans’s class were among the 17 groups who made their way through the halls of the School of Nursing and Center for Science Tuesday at Wallace State Community College. It was the first day of the nursing department’s Let’s Pretend Hospital. Through Friday, the faculty, staff and students in Nursing and Patient Care Specialist programs will welcome more than 1,000 students through their doors.
Students Elizabeth Randau and Laura Bailey were the leaders for Mrs. Evans’s class, taking them from one fun activity to another in the hour and a half they were at the college. At each location, the first-graders learned something about how to be healthy, how to stay safe, what to do in an emergency like a fire, and what types of things they could encounter if they were to go to the hospital.
“I love it,” said Randau, who is participating in her first Let’s Pretend Hospital. “The kids learn a lot and it’s very interactive and helps reduce their fears of health care personnel.”
Bailey agreed it’s fun to see and hear the kids’ reactions in each of the rooms they visit. “The kids have so much fun,” she said.
The nursing students have a lot of fun, as well, dressing up to fit the theme of the room they’ve been assigned to or leading the students around.
“I’ve learned how to interact with children,” Bailey said of one of the benefits she receives from the exercise. “They’re so different. It’s not like talking to an adult. So it’s nice to learn how to relate to them.”
For teachers like Mrs. Evans, the visit to Let’s Pretend Hospital is something they look forward to each year and they use what the students learn in their curriculum. After returning to school Tuesday afternoon, Evans said she would go over the things the students learned that day and reinforce those lessons over the year as they talk about nutrition, food groups, healthy eating habits and other subjects covered during Let’s Pretend Hospital.
The rooms the students visited included:

• Safety room, where they learned about bicycle, water, school bus and fire safety tips, as well as how to be careful around medications that in some instances resemble candy.
• X-ray room, where Elsa, Anna and Olaf from “Frozen” told them the importance of healthy eating habits and exercise for healthy bones and that it doesn’t hurt to have an X-ray.
• Patient room, which featured a jungle theme, showed the students things that will happen if they are event admitted into the hospital, including how they can summon a nurse with a push of a button, how their blood pressure and temperature will be taken, that they can play games while they’re in the hospital, that some hospitals allow therapy pets to visit patients, and how the doctor will visit them.
• Operating room, where they were presented with a child-size surgical mask and introduced to the anesthesiologist, scrub nurse, surgeon and more, who removed a funny bone and other objects from their patient.
• Emergency room, where they learned how their weight and height would be recorded and how they would be treated in the emergency room.
• Handwashing/bug room, where they learned the importance of washing their hands and covering their mouth when they coughed to avoid germs that could make them sick.
• Healthy nutrition room, where they learned to choose between healthy food and not so healthy food.

The students also visited with the personnel from Hanceville Fire and Rescue, to learn how those emergency responders will help them in case of an emergency or injury. The department showed off their ambulance and fire trucks and some of the equipment they use in their jobs.
Let’s Pretend Hospital will continue through Friday.  The Wallace State Nursing program offers an Associate in Applied Science degree for registered nurses and a certificate for practical nursing. The college also offers a certificate for Patient Care Specialist (PCS). These programs can be completed in as little as two semesters (PCS) and up to five semesters for the Associate Degree program.
For more information about the Wallace State Nursing programs, visit www.wallacestate.edu, or call 256.352.8199.