“My belly hurts,” a hyper-realistic mannequin cried out from a faux hospital bed Thursday while surrounded by students in Durango High School’s Health Science pathway curriculum.
“Can you describe the pain on a scale of one to 10 for me?” senior Rye Standifer responded, playing the role of a medical professional.
“Eight,” the mannequin groaned, while blinking and shifting its gaze from one student to another.
The rest of the simulated exam involved several more questions by Rye, including whether the mannequin had eaten or drank anything that day, and concluded with a dramatic cough and declaration from the mannequin that it “couldn’t breathe.”
“You could reposition him or listen to his lungs,” another student, Sienna Rogers, said in response to the patient’s breathing problems.
The faux human – identified in his medical chart as 33-year-old Stan D. Ardman II – is one of dozens of hands-on practice resources in the Demon Medical Lab, a simulator lab on the Durango High School campus that is set up to mirror a real medical office.
The lab allows students as young as 14 to gain hands-on medical knowledge in preparation for careers in the health care field, said Kyle Montgomery, health science pathway teacher and coordinator.
The lab was dreamed up three years ago by Montgomery and two DHS alumni. It’s been operating on the DHS campus ever since.
“There’s 400-plus kids in here that are doing something every day to make themselves a better health care professional,” Montgomery said. “... When adults come into the lab, everyone says, ‘I wish I had this in high school.”
The lab features a check-in desk and waiting room, several patient rooms, all the necessary devices and supplies needed to operate a medical office, faux arms that bleed to practice drawing blood, and a few hyper-realistic mannequins ‒ like Stan.
The practice dummies can blink, breathe, cough, speak, have a pulse, respond to light, have shots administered, be intubated, gain a heart murmur, and be afflicted with – and healed of – a range of conditions through an iPad controlled by Montgomery or his students.
Stan was being controlled with an iPad being operated by DHS senior Celia Gallavan.
Celia was able to choose Stan’s responses to Rye’s questions and cause him to experience a range of conditions through the iPad. The speaker in Stan can also be connected to a headset that other students can use to speak for him when more advanced responses are needed, Montgomery said.
“These simulators we have are just so incredible,” Celia said while swiping through the options on the iPad screen. “Like, so many schools – even colleges – don't have resources like this that our little high school does.”
The Health Science pathway through DHS allows students to work their way through a four-level curriculum spanning freshman through senior year aimed at preparing students for careers in medicine, Montgomery said. Generally, each level takes a year to complete.
A student leaves level one with training in how to administer Narcan, and certifications in CPR, AED and “stop the bleed.” Level two students gain first-aid training; level three a medical assisting certification; and level four phlebotomy and electrocardiogram – or EKG – certifications.
“A level one freshman in high school has to come in here and determine that there’s no carotid pulse (on the practice dummy), and then give breaths,” Montgomery said. “(And higher levels offer) national (certifications). You can go get a job right away if you’re not going to college, or you can go to college and get a job right away with those.”
Though Stan and his medical practice dummy friends offer their own form of immersive learning, Hosa and Health Pathway students also get to work on real humans.
Through Hosa and the Health Pathway curriculum, students have taken part in vehicle accident response simulations with local law enforcement, EKG testing workshops and international medical outreach programs in Belize and Panama, where health care has been offered to hundreds of underserved patients.
Sienna went to Belize and Panama last year, where she worked on the ground with patients.
As a first-semester senior at DHS, she has already been accepted into CU Denver’s BA/BS-MD program – an eight-year program that takes a student through their undergraduate degree and a following four-year medical doctorate program.
“All of the hands-on opportunities it provides, and just how frequently we are working in the community and with actual people, (is amazing),’” Sienna said of her involvement with the school’s Health Pathway program. “... It’s very much solidified for me that I want to go into medicine.”
Of the roughly 450 students taking courses through the Health Science pathway, 130 are also members of the school’s Hosa Future Health Professionals chapter. Hosa is an international organization recognized by the U.S. Department of Education that aids in the development of future health care leaders through integrated classroom learning, leadership training and service.
Rye, Celia and Sienna are all active members of Hosa, which means they take part in health care and health science competitions each year in addition to their regular training in the lab.
Sienna was named state champion in medical assisting at this year’s state competition, and Rye and Celia walked away with a team state championship award in forensic science, making all three eligible to compete in nationals at the Indianapolis Convention Center in Indianapolis in June.
At least 10 additional DHS students took home top-10 awards at state, and at least two others qualified for nationals.
Twenty-six DHS students were up against a pool of 2,300 Hosa competitors from chapters across the state this year, Montgomery said.
In the three years the lab has been up and running, Montgomery has already seen real-world impacts of the health care training, he said.
He said a freshman student once performed CPR – a skill she learned through the Health Pathway curriculum – on a woman who lost a pulse in an airport. Students also discovered that Montgomery’s daughter had an irregular heartbeat while doing a practice EKG during a workshop.
“(Medical schools) don’t just want educated people, they want educated people with actual experience,” Montgomery said. “And that’s what this brings.”
epond@durangoherald.com
A previous version of this story misspelled Celia Gallavan’s last name.
