Rural Health Network Visit for Year 9 students
By Elizabeth van den Berg - Careers Adviser
A change was made to the annual career speed dating event for Year 9 students this year when the school got an offer from the NZ Rural General Practice Network to bring 10 university students to our school.
These students are studying courses ranging from optometry, dentistry, nursing to medicine. The morning started with a short presentation about the wide range of health careers and the continued demand for these jobs in the future. They also highlighted the support students finishing high school from rural schools can expect to receive to make it possible for them to go into any health career. The aim of the initiative is to get more students thinking about health careers and coming back to their own communities to work in them.
After the presentation the university students set up five interactive activities which the school students participated in. The optometry students taught students about eye tests and colour blindness. Two of the medical students showed students how their knee reflexes work and student could test each others’ reflexes with patella hammers. The other two medical students taught the students the correct way of administering CPR with the help of a life size dummy. Students found out how much and effort it takes and how necessary it is to know how to do it. The dentistry students made moulds for the students mouths showing them how it works and told them how it is then used.. The nursing students taught our students to find their own pulses and also take each others’ blood pressures.
Our school students really learnt a lot and enjoyed the hour being in a 'medical career'.