Camp Cardiac

Heart of the matter: TCOM students provide hands-on lessons in health care

UNTHSC’s Camp Cardiac gives aspiring medical students a glimpse into the world of cardiology.

UNT Health Science Center
Contact do@osteopathic.org
This article was originally published by the University of North Texas Health Science Center.

After breaking a few teeth and struggling to get the tongue out of the way, Pritul Sarker, 15, successfully intubated his first patient.

“It’s in the esophagus – oh, oh, oh!” the Canterbury Episcopal School student said. “I got it, I got it! I gotta get this on Snapchat.”

Fortunately, the patient was a manikin head used to give Camp Cardiac participants a hands-on lesson in health care at the University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC).

During the five-day camp, teenagers under the supervision of medical students at UNTHSC’s Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine got the chance to take ultrasounds of their hearts, tie surgical knots and get certified in CPR.

They also studied heart anatomy, heard presentations from health care professionals and learned lessons about cardiology that they never would receive in high school.

“Before this program, becoming a physician was just a dream,” Pritul said. “Now it’s a must.”

Genna Wacker, 16 and a student at Marcus High School in Flower Mound, Texas, could barely contain her pride surrounding her first hands-on lesson in intubation.

“I learned how to intubate someone – and I did it in 21 seconds,” she said.

Jarrod Burger, 17 and a senior at Colleyville (Texas) Heritage High School, said he plans to become a cardiovascular surgeon and the camp only reinforced that goal.

Related

“This experience definitely has helped me understand the cardiovascular system,” he said. “This is so much more than we learn in high school.”

The 25 high school students attending the camp this year have all expressed an interest in health care careers and many plan to go into cardiology, said Shivani Mehta, OMS II.

“We give them an idea of how many years it takes to become a doctor,” Mehta said. “We also expose them to the kinds of procedures that every doctor is trained to do.”

The camp introduces students to experiences they are not likely to get in high school or even college, said Kristina Pham, a TCOM student and camp counselor.

“We hear a lot of lectures as medical students,” she said, “But we do not get all these hands-on experiences in the first year.”

Yasmine Bukhar, 16 and a student at The Highlands School in Irving, Texas, said she learned more about the heart than she ever imagined.

“I feel like I have learned a lot and I haven’t even started medical school,” she said.

2 comments

  1. Alan L. Carpenter, DO

    To those contemplating whether they would apply to a DO medical school. Thirty years ago I didn’t get in to the MD school I wanted. I was in the US Air Force at the time and discussed the whole matter with my doctor who I learned later was the vice-president’s doctor (we lived in Washsington DC). He told me that he was a DO and recommended DO school and so I went that way. I completed MD residencies in Internal Medicine and Nuclear Medicine and took and always passed every MD licensing board or test: so I knew where I stood. Now as I move toward the end of my career, and as I look back, I believe that the difference a DO makes has nothing to do with manipulation or holistic medicine but rather with the fact that when you are treated by a DO, you have someone that so wanted to be a physician that they forever gave up the prestigious initials of MD but are and forever will be our Doctors (a rose by any other name is a rose)

    Reply

    1. SK

      And it sounds as if you are very proud to be a DO. No matter what people will say, we are trained a bit differently and I think see and treat our patients differently (and in a good way). Even if you don’t practice manipulative techniques on a daily basis, or do OMT, we have a foundation in structural medicine that no doubt helps us anatomically on a daily basis. We’ve worked hard to get where we are at, and getting a DO is no longer a 2nd class medical degree. The way I see it, we are trained like a MD, but have additional training that most wish they could have (and some residency programs are now providing–see other articles in this month’s DO magazine). We come from a long line of intelligent and forward thinking physicians. We should be continually proud to be DOs!

      Reply

Leave a comment Please see our comment policy