Students from Harlandale High School got to work as health professionals through a St. Philip’s College program. Courtesy photo

Ten Harlandale High School students got to work as health professionals with some of the best equipment and personnel recently in San Antonio, thanks to St. Philip’s College.

Code-named Camp 98.6, the health career prep program ran June 9 to 13 and took place at SPC, University Hospital and the University of Texas Health Science Center facilities.

“They saw everything,” Joyce E. Turner-Ferrie, a registered nurse, said. Turner-Ferrie is also the coordinator of the Human Patient Simulation Center and Nursing Laboratories at SPC.

“I hope we enroll some of the students in our college programs and encourage women and minorities to enter the health professions,” Turner-Ferrie said. “That’s why we did this.”

As part of the program, the students went on the rooftop tarmac of a helipad to learn how to take a patient in and go back inside the hospital through an entrance door, to take the patient from the pad on a stretcher and down to an emergency room.

The local press showed up to cover the unique program. The college may participate in a larger-scale mass casualty exercise in the city later this year, Turner-Ferrier said.

“There are plenty of opportunities to learn about health professionals and a lot for students to do at St. Philip’s College,” 98.6 student Rosemary Ruiz said. “The people at the college provided me with equal amounts of college and technical information. I’m much more interested in the college’s nursing programs than I was before I visited.”

Experts at the St. Philip’s College Allied Health and Nursing Departments taught Ruiz and fellow students. They worked with the college’s UT and University Hospital counterparts in a scenario involving a head injury patient arriving at University Hospital’s heliport.