Gig Harbor students suture, scrub at St. Joseph

Nate Hulings

of the Gateway

Tucked away on the second floor of St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, Gig Harbor’s Sara Meisburger, 14 — dressed in full scrubs — stood in the very spot where her father, Dr. John Meisburger, helps administer anesthetics.

On the operating table in front of her, a $1.5 million robot, operated by a fellow classmate on the other side of the room, meticulously pinched and pulled string through a piece of foam, simulating suture techniques.

For now, it’s the closest Meisburger or 11 other Peninsula School District students will get to being medical professionals.

More than 70 students from across the south Puget Sound attended Franciscan Health System’s Health Adventures week.

Health Adventures programs also were held at St. Francis in Federal Way and St. Clare in Lakewood. This year’s program was held July 7-10.

It was the program’s 10th year, during which it brings students into direct contact with medical professionals.

Health Adventures stresses all fields of medicine, so it shouldn’t be called a nurse camp, coordinator Sheri Bebbington said.

“Where nursing camps tend to focus on nursing, we focus on a broader range of health care careers,” Bebbington said.

So why is Meisburger, not yet a high school student, so interested in the health care industry? It’s simple.

“Knowing you’re helping people,” she said. “Knowing you’re saving lives.”

Throughout the week, students got a chance to walk in the shoes — or in this case, the scrubs — of lab pathologists, pharmacists, physical therapists, surgery technicians, nurses and emergency room surgeons.

Students started each day with a group dinner to bond and discuss the upcoming schedule. The group also got a chance to work with real medical equipment — none more intuitive, or expensive, than the da Vinci Surgical System.

The $1.5 million da Vinci has four robotic arms, a vision system to create a 3-D atmosphere inside patients, and other technology that scales hand movements so the robot’s movements are as precise as its operator.

Each student got a chance to work with the robot and a tangle of string and foam. When their time came, students stuck their face into the vision system and placed their thumbs and index fingers on both hands into small loops that, when pinched, were mimicked by the robot on the other side of the room. Wrist and arm movements also were replicated to mirror human movement.

The da Vinci robot is used in cardiac, urology and general surgery.

Before heading to the operating room, the students spent time in the lab examining fetuses and human body parts. Some were a little queasy after the experience.

“The smells get me,” said Michelle Henderson, an incoming freshman at Gig Harbor High School. “That’s the only thing.”

Henderson wants to start volunteering at a hospital and aspires to work in neurology.

Of the 27 students participating at the St. Joseph location, only three were male — a general stereotype of a society that sees the health care industry, especially nursing, as a female-dominated field. However, as a direct challenge to that stereotype, a male nurse led the St. Joseph nursing session.

Established in 1999, the original intent of the Health Adventures program was to help disadvantaged middle school students find health care mentors. That was the policy from its inception until 2007.

Then the hospital realized the mentor program was too narrow and limited the number of students it could host.

“It wasn’t making an impact,” Bebbington said.

So, with the approval from the American Hospital Association, which created the program, Franciscan Health Services started its current four-day experience.

Bebbington said she hears success stories from past Health Adventures students who are now either working on a health care-related degree or already at work in the field.

“The main reason that we are doing this is that we want to introduce young people into the world of health care and health care careers,” Bebbington said. “So, as they move on to high school, they seriously consider health care as a career.”

Tapping students before they have signed up for high school classes is vital. That’s why the Franciscan Health System targets middle-school students.

“They haven’t had a chance to mess up their grades yet,” Bebbington said. “We’re giving them an opportunity to look and say, ‘Wow, maybe I’ll take a harder math or science class.’ ”

Next year, Health Adventures participants from the peninsula will be able to stay in their own neighborhood for the four-day program: The program plans to expand to Gig Harbor’s St. Anthony Hospital next summer.

For acceptance into the program, students had to submit an application that included grades and three questions regarding why they wanted to participate.