Hospital internship gives teens glimpse into medicine

Six high school students sat at their desks, waiting for a day of learning to begin. They had ridden the school bus together and now chatted quietly or checked their cell phones. Some fidgeted with their uniforms.

But while their classmates sat back in anatomy class in Middletown High School North, these teens got an up-close view of the medical world, thanks to an internship program with Bayshore Community Hospital in Holmdel.

Each Tuesday, the six female students ride a school bus from Middletown to the Holmdel hospital and change into medical scrubs. They then split up and trail a nurse or doctor in one of the departments as an observer.

"You just kind of soak it up and learn everything you can, said Gina Baker, a junior.

The six are part of the district's fall internship program titled the Structured Learning Experience. Through that program 35 students age 16 or older travel to 24 partner businesses, where they spend four hours each week.

By spending time at businesses like International Flavors and Fragrances in Union Beach and Sunrise Assisted Living in Lincroft, students get a sense of how these workplaces operate.

Middletown High School North students Lisa Pignataro (clockwise from left), Nicole Tendler, Gina Baker, Alexis Koisa and Jessica Saunders practice using a stethoscope. Marianne Caruso, registered nurse and staff development instructor at Bayshore Community Hospital in Holmdel, instructs the high school interns in the correct use of the stethoscope. The students at Bayshore Community Hospital were selected from 40 applicants, said Weslee Sernitsky, the Structured Learning Experience coordinator. A similar group from Middletown High School South that includes special needs students goes to Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank.

Most of the girls said they were interested in a career in medicine because they liked helping people. But for Lisa Pignataro, a senior, it's a way of giving back. Pignataro had surgery to remove seven bone chips from her elbow and required occupational therapy, where she relearned how to do simple tasks like comb her hair after the surgery. When she gets the chance, she goes to the occupational therapy department to observe.

Middletown HS North students in an internship program at Bayshore Community Hospital in Holmdel read medical texts in the hospital library. "When you leave, you actually feel productive," Pignataro said.

For safety reasons, the students at Bayshore Community Hospital are not allowed to assist in any of the treatments. They're also kept away from patients with contagious diseases, said Marianne Caruso, R.N., staff development instructor.

The students can still come away with important lessons, Caruso said. Chief among them is how to interact with patients. A career in medicine requires people to cross the normal boundaries of personal space. Learning simple things like how to approach a patient and touching can go a long way.

"It's very hard to nurture a caring generation," she said.

Mostly, the interns observe doctors, nurses and staff in action. In radiology, for example, Baker and Nicole Tendler, a senior, listened to Marie Schettino as she took images of a patient's chest with a mobile Xray. Schettino, a radiologic technologist who's been at the hospital for 28 years, explained what she was doing and how her job has changed in the last three decades.

When she first started, Schettino had to claw open large cassettes and develop X-ray film in a dark room. The X-rays took about 45 seconds to develop, which meant a single patient could require up to 20 minutes of work. These days, Xrays can be done digitally, allowing multiple people to access them simultaneously and almost immediately. It's a crucial ability in a time when doctors rarely need to perform exploratory surgery." X-rays are the

most useful tool in medicine today," Schettino proudly told the two students.

On Oct. 27, the students learned another important lesson in medicine: patience. The students were supposed to observe doctors take images of a patient's heart by placing a cardiac catheter down the patient's esophagus. However, a technician needed to do mandated maintenance to the cardiac catheter laboratory, delaying the procedure.

Normally, nurses use time like this to catch up on paperwork, Caruso said. But, while the students may look like nurses in the medical scrubs, they're still teenagers at heart. Lauren Gazerwitz and Jessica Saunders poked around the lab, looking at informational wall charts and conversion tables. Eventually, they took markers and drew curly mustaches on their facemasks, giggling.

Eventually, word came down that the patient wasn't receptive to drugs and wasn't falling asleep. The anesthesiologist wouldn't be available for another hour, meaning the students had to leave before the procedure began. It was proof of how interconnected the departments of the hospital are, and just another lesson for the interns.