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Students Watch How Hospital Nurses Work

Hip replacement surgery at age 17 gave Elizabeth Matias ideas for her dream career.

One year later, on a recent Friday in the emergency room at Memorial Hospital Miramar, Elizabeth’s dream was real enough to feel.

‘’I got a hug today. A woman came out of nowhere and hugged me just for being here,’’ said the Everglades High School senior during the hospital’s Day in the Life of a Nurse event for future nurses.

Five students from the school’s allied health science program, taught by registered nurse Sheron Favata, followed five nurses through daily work duties that changed second by second in a literal heartbeat.

Terrie Garner, the hospital’s director of human resources, said the all-girl group was assigned to nurse mentors: two in the emergency room, two in the cardiac unit and one in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit for premature and sick newborns.

‘’When young people think of nursing, they envision a stereotype. We show them very skilled, very technical professionals,’’ Garner said.

The event, a 10th annual national happening, put 1,000 local teens in the shadows of 1,000 nurses from northern Palm Beach County to South Miami-Dade. Sixty South Broward teens from Everglades, McArthur, Hollywood Hills and Flanagan high schools visited four hospitals in the Memorial system.

Favata said the nurses also gave teens glimpses of opportunities that take them out of hospitals and into schools, community clinics, home healthcare, mission work in Third World nations and even jobs in the military.

Carmen Lopez-Cardona, a former Air Force nurse, was mentor for a day to Jennifer Gasparo, 17, at Memorial Miramar’s neonatal unit.

’’I’ve done and seen a lot of things in my life as a nurse that I thought I never would. Was I ever scared? Sometimes, but scared makes you careful. Is it hard? Yes, but so worth it,’’ Lopez-Cardona said.

Garner said the program also aims to answer a national nursing shortage by showing teens how the profession has evolved from basic healthcare to specializations in medicine and technology.

Salaries also have changed. Fifteen years ago, new nurses made an average of $20,000 annually. Today’s nurses start out at about $40,000 a year.

Sharon Joyner, a registered nurse and Memorial Miramar’s director of critical care services, said nursing students learn ‘’21st century technology and medical advances’’ from Day One.

’’Today’s nursing students get all the bells and whistles. But still they come for the true reason anyone wants to be a nurse — to care for someone else,’’ Joyner said.

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