(JR intubating a “patient” prior to surgery)
The annual Minorities in Health Sciences Symposium, held at Esperanza College of Eastern University, provided students from Sophia Academy and numerous other high schools in Philadelphia with the opportunity to explore the many varied options in the health sciences field.
Morning speakers passed on great nuggets of information. What do our students remember?
–That when you feel a panic attack coming on, placing your right hand firmly over your chest will simulate the feeling of a hug. That four hugs a day are necessary for life, eight are necessary for growth, and a minimum of twelve hugs each day are necessary to thrive.
–That Jefferson Hospital and Esperanza College have a PACE program which gives students full-time jobs at Jefferson while they take pre-nursing or pre-med courses at Esperanza. And that Jefferson provides scholarships for tuition in addition to the jobs. Win-win.
–That there are many ways to the future and everyone can take the path that works best for them.
The afternoon sessions were completely hands-on as students could choose between dissection, virtual reality, healthy cooking, extracting DNA and much more. Our students compared healthy and diseased retinas under microscopes, used VR to rescue victims of a car crash, handled real human brains with the eyes still attached, and practiced forcing the brain and eye to work together while looking in a mirror to draw a star. Now, that was hard!
