Program at ICC-Tupelo seeks to interest high school students in healthcare

The event features real life simulations students can't get in their classrooms

TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI) – The healthcare profession faces a shortage of workers, but a program at  ICC’s Tupelo campus is hoping to spark some interest in the field among high school students.

It was a look at real-life simulations healthcare workers face every day.

Juniors and seniors from twelve area schools experienced the Code Blue and Red event at ICC’s Health Sciences Center in Tupelo.

“Hopefully it will give them some type of idea of real-life healthcare experience from ER, all the way to the operating room to rehab after everything is over,” said Tonya Vaughn, Dean of Health Science Instruction.

Students and faculty from the school’s health science programs helped with each scenario, explained the steps to take to deal with each issue, and answered questions from the high school students.

It is also a recruitment tool for ICC which offers eleven health science programs.

“We see it as a great tool to not only get students on campus and see what our programs offer, state of the art facilities, labs, but also an opportunity for students to learn more about an area they may be interested in high school and figure out if it’s something they might want to pursue in college,” said Michael Holloway, Director of Recruitment and Orientation.

The real-life simulations are much different from what students routinely get in their classrooms.

“In our class, we don’t have as much stuff as here,  it’s not true experiences, this stuff has the blood, and true experiences, you can just see the live part of it,” said Amber Lee Ramey, a senior at IAHS.

“The extra exposure is what students need, they can read about it on a piece of paper and learn about it in the classroom, but until they see the setting, they don’t know what it is going to be like,” said Britney Martin, a counselor at the Itawamba Career and Technical Center.

Code Blue and Red has been an annual event for several years, but interest in this one was so strong, there will be a second Code Blue and Red this fall.

More than 70 students signed up for Code Blue and Red.

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