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Virtual surgery sparks medical career interest
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
Timberland High School senior Ashley Welsh plans to become a nurse, a career move that will help ease South Carolina’s nursing shortage.
Hospitals across the state are reporting vacancy rates ranging from 8% to 26% in nursing and other health professions, according to the South Carolina Hospital Association.
On Dec. 7, Welsh was one of about 30 Timberland High students who watched a triple bypass heart surgery that South Carolina ETV broadcast live to about 600 students at 12 high schools in the state.
Called the Virtual Surgery Insider project, the event, sponsored by the South Carolina Hospital Association, the state education department and Self Regional Healthcare, whetted the 18-year-old Welsh’s appetite for a medical career.
“It furthered my understanding of what open heart surgery is,” Welsh said of the interactive broadcast, during which students phoned in questions to the surgeon during the operation. “It explained the procedure step by step.”
The VSI project’s intention was to ignite interest in health care professions. Such interest is needed not only for the welfare of South Carolina residents, but also for the state’s economic health, the association pointed out.
Nurses, medical technologists, clinical laboratory scientists, surgical technicians, pharmacists and physicians are in short supply.
“South Carolina hospitals are critical to the new knowledge economy since they represent an ever-growing supply of high paying, stable jobs,” said Thornton Kirby, the association’s president and CEO.
“However, students need to know about the types of careers available to them and the education they need to get into a university or technical college training program,” Kirby said. “The VSI project brings hospital careers to life by taking teens inside an actual operating room and allowing them to talk to the surgical team during and after an open-heart surgical procedure.”
The VSI project was one of five programs in the United States offering students an interactive operating room experience in their high school.
The 1,000-student Timberland High in rural Berkeley County welcomed the project. High gasoline prices have caused schools like Timberland, located about 50 miles from Charleston, to eliminate field trips that required the use of buses.
“I think that’s why we were chosen for the program, because we’re such a rural school,” said Janice Jernigan, a registered nurse who teaches health science technology at Timberland.
This was South Carolina’s third VIS project and the first time Timberland was chosen to participate, according to Jernigan, who wrote the program’s curriculum and submitted Timberland’s application to the hospital association.
Other participating local high schools were Goose Creek High and Stall High.
The broadcast and student interaction with Dr. Claudio Guareschi, the surgeon who performed the operation in Greenwood, went without a hitch.
The program has been a big hit among health care-minded high school students, said Lara Hewitt, director of workforce educational services for the state hospital association.
The association surveyed the 744 students who participated in the previous virtual surgery and found that 77% of the students were motivated or encouraged to consider health care as a career, Hewitt said. Ninety-three percent of the students said they would want to participate in another virtual surgery.
“Students have told us that the best part of the program is the interaction with the surgeon,” Hewitt said. “They enjoy having the opportunity to talk to a real surgeon who is actually working in the field in which these students are interested. This whole experience allows the students to really see a glimpse of what it will be like to work in health care.”
Dennis Quick covers health and wellness for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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