Nurse Camp introduces high school students to wide-ranging world of nursing

For the third consecutive summer, the Liberty University School of Nursing is offering high school students the opportunity to experience the passion and proper practices of being a nurse in multiple fields at its on-campus Nurse Camp.

Dean Shanna Akers said the camp, which started on Monday and runs through Wednesday, is taking additional precautions this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, including holding the sessions in larger rooms with spaced seating, daily temperature checks for the students and staff, and an extra emphasis on handwashing. As nurses, Akers explained, many of the practices are already part of the daily work routine, and at this year’s camp, they are talking about the precautions in a timely way.

“We will definitely have conversations about the current trends in healthcare and the challenges that nursing is facing today, and we’ll tackle it from the front,” Akers said. “We’ll be doing a lot of what we normally do anyways with a lot of handwashing and wearing personal protective equipment (PPE).”

With the popularity of the camp growing and some campers returning for another year, Akers said they originally planned on 50 participants. However, due to COVID-19 restrictions, the camp was limited to 30. The students are mostly from around Virginia but also North Carolina, Tennessee, and other nearby states.

Upon arrival, campers were given a pair of scrubs, stethoscope, and camp T-shirt. Campers are learning the key values of being a nurse as they participate in simulations and training for multiple areas in the vast nursing field.

“They learn how to take vital signs, we usually have them learn bandaging and splinting, they participate in a simulation of delivering a baby, and all sorts of other simulations and training,” Akers said. “We want them to see the realities of what nursing is, and that’s when we have some of our colleagues from the area come and visit to spend time with the campers, giving them realistic expectations of what it is like to be a nurse.”

A new addition to the program is moulage, the use of makeup that helps people acting as patients during a simulation look more realistic.

“For example, if someone has fallen, they’ll have a bruise and black eye, if they have a broken arm, we make it look like they’ve done that,” Akers said. “It’s creating fake injuries on themselves or on their classmates that look real, such as a wound or bruise, and we do that to give the real feel of a nursing experience.”

High school friends Lillian Nelson and Josephine Gravitt from Atlanta, Ga., heard about the camp after their mothers learned about it online. Following the first full day of camp on Monday, Nelson and Gravitt felt like the camp had already given them a glimpse of what nursing entails.

“I got to see that being good at (nursing) is something you have to work hard for … because you have other people’s lives in your hands,” Nelson said. “I want to be a nurse, but I don’t know exactly what field of it I want to go into, so it was nice to get a little taste of everything and possibly see where God is going to lead me.”

“The hands-on teaching has really helped me learn what it’s like to be a nurse in a lot of the different (fields),” Gravitt added. “I’ve wanted to be a nurse since my brother was in the NICU five years ago. We saw this together and thought it’d be something exciting to learn.”

At the end of Monday’s activities, the campers and their families had the opportunity to attend a dinner together, learn more about the School of Nursing, and tour campus.

Akers said that contrary to the sometimes narrow outside view of what a nurse does, the camp truly illustrates the wide-ranging roles a nurse can hold in the medical field, including as a nurse practitioner, midwife, educator, critical care, emergency room staff, and countless other positions.

“The role of a nurse is so broad, yet when you hear about a nurse you usually think about someone in a hospital taking care of a sick adult,” Akers explained. “In reality, there are so many different types of nursing that it’s so interesting to see all of the things that nurses accomplish. It helps us to recruit the next generation because many people don’t see themselves being a nurse until they learn more about it and see the passion of others, and passion can be very contagious.”

Camper Leah Wright from Fredericksburg, Va., said she had always wanted to be a nurse because of the chance to interact with people and “be the hands and feet of Jesus.”

“There’s something special about everyone in the same room as you having the same passion as you, and even though we don’t all know what we specifically want to do, we get to talk about it here,” she said.

Current Liberty nursing students were also invited to spend time with the campers and speak about their experience in the program.

“This is one of my favorite times of the year because there’s something about people who are interested in a career and haven’t had a full-on experience in their calling yet and get that ‘ah ha’ moment,” Akers said. “We have campers who come back to Liberty as students afterward that we’ve already gotten to know from camp, and they’ll have that moment of reconnecting with us. It gives me the chance to know their name and know them, which I love, and it allows them the opportunity to visit and meet future classmates.”