Shands Hosts Young ‘Doctors’ Contest Winners Get a Look at Emergency Medicine.

By STEVE PATTERSON

In a hospital room stocked with life-saving equipment, 10-year- old Emma Devine asked a classic kid’s question.

“What’s that do?” she said, pointing at a flexible mask and black bag for resuscitating patients who aren’t breathing.

Madeline Joseph, medical director for Shands Jacksonville’s pediatric emergency department, told her to pick it up and try it out.

“You want to bag, see how it feels?” other kids standing close by were offered.

For a while Saturday, they were doctors for a day, winners of contest with that name that gave children from age 9 to 13 first- hand exposure to emergency medicine.

Eight winners were picked in a drawing from entries left at pediatricians’ offices around Northeast Florida.

“A lot of kids are afraid to go to the doctor. This gives them sort of a behind-the-scenes look,” said Terry Lee, marketing director for First Coast Advantage, a health-care network that set up the event with Radio Disney. He said more drawings are planned every three months.

Shands employees explained to the youngsters how a child brought there in an emergency is evaluated and treated.

“I thought it’d be a good experience for me,” said Destiny Rudolph, 11, who first thought about becoming a doctor two years ago.

Putting technology in children’s hands was a big part of the two- hour tour.

Charge nurse Tracy Provenzano clipped a monitor onto a fingertip, then pointed to a computer screen that reported a heart rate and oxygen levels in a person’s blood from the monitor readings.

“In the old days, we did things by hand,” she said, explaining how stethoscopes work. She explained how patents are prioritized at emergency rooms, how pain is measured, how color-coding systems for patient records warn hospital staff about allergies and help them quickly calculate the correct dosage of medicine based on a child’s weight.

Down a hallway, children held their arms under a “vein viewer,” an infrared imaging machine that displays veins’ paths and size on top of the skin.

The children were shown how to help a choking infant by dislodging the object blocking their breath. They practiced delivering sharp blows to the back of a doll used for training hospital workers.

“If you were in a restaurant, you might have 10 adults around you and maybe nine of them wouldn’t know what to do,” Scott Von Berner, an emergency medical technician, told them.

Two hours of demonstrations made medicine a little less scary for the youngsters.

“I learned not really to be scared in case of an emergency,” Emma Devine said. “If my little sister started to choke, I’d know what to do.”steve.patterson@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4263

(c) 2008 Florida Times Union. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.