Two trips to Virginia Highlands Community College (VHCC) nursing sims and cadaver labs were planned in order for each student to obtain hands-on learning about the human body, and to give them insight the facilities and resources available at VHCC. Ms. Hilt, the Assistant Professor of Nursing at VHCC, provided a tour of the state-of-the-art sims lab, which contains multiple simulation mannequins used to create real-life nursing situations. For example, one of the mannequins was a pregnant female, which Ms. Hilt uses to simulate labor and hemorrhaging to teach the nursing students how to respond. Due to the COVID pandemic, the mannequins have been vital to VHCC since their students cannot partake in hospital clinical rotations. The BRJC students were able to see multiple demonstrations, as well as feel the mannequins for pulses, and listen to their hearts and bowel sounds.
Students then met with Professor Little, the Associate Professor of Biology at VHCC. First, she gave a short PowerPoint presentation on how a person may donate their body to science and how those bodies are transferred to higher education institutions such as VHCC. Once she completed her presentation and answered questions from the students, the students were required to outfit themselves in personal protective equipment before they entered the cadaver lab. The students were then able to enter, and Professor Little showed the cadavers to the students, and even removed the cadaver’s organs. They were able to hold hearts, lungs, and intestines from both mannequins, and were able to hold organs specific to each sex (the prostate on the male, and the uterus on the female). This was also incredibly informative, because all of the students were able to take the knowledge from Medical Terminology, Career Technical Training, and Phlebotomy, and apply that to this experience. In class, the instructors talk about these structures on the body, but this activity allowed them to actually see what the structures look like within (and outside) of a real human body.
The students thoroughly enjoyed the trips, and still talk about the things that they saw! According to CMA student Sara Escobar Cruz, “this was a very interesting trip, and a great learning experience for anyone interested in the medical field.”
Blue Ridge Job Corps would like to thank VHCC for hosting us, and we look forward to visiting again soon.