Huntley hospital hosts students interested in nursing

About 25 area students interested in nursing spent a recent Saturday at Northwestern Medicine Huntley Hospital learning about the various roles that nurses play in each hospital unit.

The participants applied and were selected to participate through the Northwestern Medicine Discovery Program, a health care mentoring program for local students, the hospital said in a news release. During the day, students had the opportunity to practice hands-on skills, including practicing cardiac CPR simulation.

The Northwestern Medicine Discovery Program aims to create a pathway for the next generation of health care professionals, providing STEM career exploration opportunities that students might otherwise not have access to, according to the release.

“I enjoyed going around the hospital, getting the feel of it and seeing how people need to cooperate to help others, and the tools they have at their disposal,” Crystal Lake South High School senior Maximo Soto Morales said in the release. “I enjoyed doing the CPR because the mannequin we used has a different feel from the CPR dummies we used in middle school as a learning activity. It had heartbeats to mimic a real person and also had lungs moving up and down.”

The Northwestern Medicine Discovery Program currently has six chapters. The northwest chapter meetings are held once a month at Northwestern Medicine’s Huntley, McHenry or Woodstock hospitals.

Applications for the next program will be available beginning in August and are due in September.

For more information, go to bit.ly/NWMedDiscoveryProgram.