WCHS gets hospital equipment

By WILL STEWART / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

River Park nursing director Maria Ryan, seated, has her vital signs checked by high school health science students Kimberly Pettigrew, standing, and Kendra Savage, kneeling. Teachers, from left, Cappi Jones, Lisa Patton and Kaye Grandstaff look on.

Hands-on student medical training at Warren County High School became a little easier last week when River Park Hospital donated thousands of dollars worth of surplus medical equipment to the school’s heath science department.

“This is wonderful,” said heath occupations teacher Lisa Patton. “It’s very difficult for the school system to provide everything we need for hands-on training. It’s great to have this kind of cooperative spirit in our community.”

Among the more expensive donations was a crash cart. Others included a gurney, a medicine cart, a wheel chair and pediatric scales.

Patton said the equipment will be utilized by nearly all of the 250 students enrolled in such health science classes as rehab therapy, diagnostic medicine, medical therapeutics and anatomy and physiology.

Skills like transferring patients from a gurney to a bed and using a medicine cart to follow drug administration rules gives the students practical applications to what they see in their textbooks, she said.

“The students think they’re playing. It’s fun, but at the same time learning by example will often stick with them longer,” said Patton.

River Park marketing director Susan Barrett said the hospital was more than happy to make the equipment donations and hopes to make more of them in the future.

“We’re helping them so they can help us. They’re teaching our future employees,” Barrett said of the health science department. “If we can help them do their job better we will get better employees in a few years. And with the current nursing shortage, we need more medical professionals.”