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In a typical week at Baxter Health’s simulation lab, Mountain Home High School students might deliver a baby, handle a trauma case, or work alongside Harvard medical students — all part of an innovative program transforming how healthcare education is delivered at the high school level.
“We are asking our students to step outside of the classroom environment and engage deeply with information they have learned in their past medical CTE classes,” said Tenille Rauls, who oversees the program. “They leave behind the identity of a student and take on new roles. Each week, they are going to be either a physician, a nurse, an aide, a phlebotomist, a radiology technician, and even an EMT.”
The program, now in its fourth year, emerged from an unexpected source: the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Prior to COVID, the students felt like all they were getting to do was watch and chart, that they weren’t getting to actually experience anything in their internship,” Rauls explained. “This is the best thing that came out of COVID.”
Students must maintain a 2.0 GPA and complete an application process including teacher recommendations and interviews. Each fall begins with a white coat ceremony where students receive their coats and stethoscopes, funded by community partners.
“They view being part of this program as an honor,” Rauls said. “We are now to the process that we have more applied than we have positions for. We haven’t had to turn away anyone yet, but we’re looking for more options to expand.”
The hands-on training is extensive. Students learn CPR, proper personal protective equipment procedures, IV placement, and blood draws. They even experience patient perspectives, including what it’s like to be a stroke patient.
“They get to learn just what it means to be a stroke patient, that they might have to feed their patients and what that feels like, what that tastes like. They serve each other this thickening material,” Rauls said.
The program includes unique learning experiences like radiology presentations where “they x-ray chickens and then they break chickens’ bones and see what that looks like.” Students even perform mock orthopedic surgery: “they got to take a plate and screw from an orthopedist tray and fix a cow bone that was wrapped in puff pastry to make it more lifelike.”
Perhaps most impressive is the program’s partnership with Harvard Medical School. Every Friday, students participate in virtual sessions where they interact with medical students and work through real cases.
“Each student is assigned a role,” Rauls explained. “We have someone who comes in and says ‘Hi, I’m Dr. Coleman, and I’m going to be your doctor today. Can you tell me what brought you in?’ They start from the chief complaint, work their way through history of present elements, get the medications, get past family history, past surgical history, past medical history.”
The program culminates in mock trauma scenarios where students must handle complete emergency situations. “They have to go out in the field, load them up on the ambulance, they ride from the ambulance in the field around to the emergency room,” Rauls said. “When there, they’re intubating, starting CPR, starting an IV, running the crash cart, drawing blood.”
The simulation’s realism is striking: “These mannequins believe they bleed, they talk, they yell at you, they say ‘I’m in pain,’ their pupils dilate. It is extremely lifelike.”
With about 15-16 students per semester, the program maintains small class sizes to ensure quality instruction. While most participants continue into medical fields, Rauls considers it equally successful when students realize healthcare isn’t their calling.
“I tell them when they get to the end, if they don’t want to go into medicine, that’s okay,” she said. “They don’t have to burn through their money and time. So that’s considered a huge win.”
The program has become a model for medical education at the secondary level. “The only other high school that has this opportunity is Boston Public Schools through partnerships with Harvard,” Rauls noted.
Students interested in experiencing these mock trauma scenarios can attend the next sessions in the first week of December on the third floor of Baxter Health.
