The quote seems especially fitting after celebrating our recent Community Regional Medical Center Career Day with 30 Birney Elementary 5th grade students.Birney, located in the heart of Fresno, is a diverse school with a majority of Latino and Southeast Asian students and 97% are considered low-income and 27% are English learners. Their teachers say many of these students never venture further than a few miles from their neighborhood. Many of these students might otherwise never have the opportunity to see themselves in an administration, healthcare or nutrition career.
As a reward for hard work and high grades, the Birney Bears program chose its brightest students to visit Community Regional and participate in a fun, hands-on learning experience in several hospital areas—dining and nutrition, operating room, emergency department, laboratory and radiology.
Students started the day in our Food Service Department where they made salads and meatballs in our kitchen. In the operating room, they prepped a fake patient for surgery and tested their hand-eye coordination skills on our robotic assisted surgery system, da Vinci.
In our Emergency Department, the students did a mock heart recovery for a transplant, helping to speed the organ up to the helipad where a SkyLife helicopter was standing by to transport the heart to recipient at a New York hospital.
Our Radiology department taught students what they would need to study in order to take bone and body ‘pictures.’ And in our laboratory, they learned how the teams that patients rarely see have some of the biggest impacts on their recovery.
The experience was not only fun and fulfilling for the students, but our internal team and staff participating had a blast creating the exciting and interactive experience for each child.
We hope that students got a glimpse of the passion and hard work that it takes to keep a whole community healthy. And what a shining example they got during the tour!
Thank you to all who made it possible!
Alma Martinez
Community Outreach Specialist
Community Medical Centers
