K-12 School Partnerships
Health Care Education and Outreach to Local Schools
SHS collaborates with area schools to offer students age-appropriate health care information and training. Services range from brief tours to health-related puppet shows and full-curriculum career courses.
Tours
Area schools and other organizations that work with children (scouts, day-care centers, Boys and Girls clubs) are welcome to call ahead to arrange tours of SHS hospitals. To facilitate the tours, SHS employees answer questions and give children new insights into health care. Individual tours of the hospital are also available to children who are about to have a hospital stay. Parents or guardians may arrange such a tour if they believe their child might be apprehensive about his or her upcoming hospital visit.
Puppet shows for first-graders
Through its Auxiliary, Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center regularly hosts health-related puppet shows for young school children. The shows use whimsical characters to address such topics as the right ways to take medicine (only with parental supervision) and the dangers of drugs. Each show is followed by a milk and cookie snack and a hospital tour.
Health Careers Camp for middle school students
With the opening of the Health Career Center in 2002 on the campus of Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital, SHS was able to extend its health care training outreach to more students than ever before. SHS instituted the “Health Careers Camp” at the center and 25 middle school students attended in its first summer. During their three-day experience, students looked in ears, did some mock suturing and other clinical simulations, and learned about the clinical aspects of health care. The camp has become an annual event.
Health Occupation classes for high school students
SHS works with high schools throughout the SHS service area to spark an interest in health care careers. Each year, SHS opens its clinical sites to about 100 high school students enrolled in Health Occupation classes. SHS professionals work with the students to help them understand the many opportunities for employment in health care.
SHS has developed rigorous policies and procedures to make the classes professional and meaningful. Students learn everything from how to dress tastefully and professionally in health care settings, to the extreme importance of confidentialityand hands-on experience of treatment techniques.
Support for Albany School Nurse, Athletic Trainer Programs
Samaritan Albany General Hospital contributes in excess of $100,000 each year to its local school district. This support includes complete responsibility for the Greater Albany Public Schools school nurse program, as well as funding for two athletic trainers and their programs at South Albany and West Albany high schools.
Gifts to Schools
Samaritan hospitals routinely donate small gifts of supplies or services to area schools. Items may include tongue depressors or inexpensive stethoscopes to help health education teachers with classroom lessons, or they may include printed materials on health-related topics.
As an example, at Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital in Lincoln City, the Marketing and Public Relations Department worked with the Materials Management Department to provide supplies to fill “disaster backpacks” for each classroom at Taft Elementary School. The donation included steripads, gloves, alcohol swabs, surgical tape, gauze, and triangular bandages.
Trauma Nurses Talk Tough
Trauma nurses from Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center (Corvallis) make dozens of visits each year to K-12 classrooms to present their “Trauma Nurses Talk Tough” program. Through lectures, videos and posters, the nurses give students a real picture of the dangers inherent in reckless behaviors such as drinking and driving, and not wearing helmets while motorcycle/bicycle riding. The nurses present their program in local schools, as well as schools in communities such as Brownsville, Independence, Alsea, and Monroe. They visit the Oak Creek Correctional Facility in Albany also. On occasion, nurses will set up an educational booth at community events such as the annual “daVinci Days” celebration in Corvallis.
Distribution of Bicycle Helmets
At many Samaritan hospitals, patients who come to the Emergency Room following a riding accident will receive a free, new helmet. The helmets are distributed based on need and are given to a trauma victim whose helmet broke during an accident or who was not wearing a helmet at the time of the accident. At Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, for example, the Trauma Department purchases about $1,000 worth of bicycle helmets every year. In addition to being distributed in the ER, helmets are given to community outreach clinics and county referral agencies that serve low-income families.
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