View Larger Image Seventh-grade students from Lacy Academy listen as a senior Respiratory Care student, right, explains a diagnostic procedure to them. The artificial on the table is used in instruction and training in the program.
Seventh-grade students from Lacey K-8 Academy listen as Reginald Brasfield, a second-year Respiratory Care master's-degree student, right, explains a diagnostic procedure to them. The artificial arm on the table is used in instruction and training in the program.

CHP Program Introduces Seventh Graders to Respiratory Care

By Ben Boulden

| The Department of Respiratory Care in the UAMS College of Health Professions (CHP) on Oct. 17 provided a hands-on learning experience to 15 seventh grade students from the Dr. Marian G. Lacey K-8 Academy in Little Rock.

“I think it went really well. These students were really engaged, and obviously very bright. I knew they would be, but they were making connections I didn’t expect them to make,” said Tom Jones, Ed.D., associate professor in the department and its chair and program director. “They came in with some baseline knowledge but quickly used critical thinking to apply information from the various stations we had to their project.”

Senior UAMS students in the program instructed three groups of seventh graders using lifelike manikins and anatomical models during the session.

The collaboration between the Academy and the department began when Jayden Wiggins, the students’ teacher, contacted Jones about helping her class explore a practical application of their Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Art and Math (STREAM) curriculum.

The class uses a teaching and learning module for this, which focuses on levels of organization, human lung tissues, and human cells, and a hypothetical scenario.

In the scenario, a man has suffered breathing issues after inhaling biohazards from smoke on an island vacation. The ultimate task was for the students to determine how to create an artificial lung to help him breathe normally. The university lab visit was structured to connect the theoretical science concepts of the hypothetical to real-world applications.

Academy students practice using a stethoscope and listening to each other's heartbeats and breathing under the instruction of Godwin Okeh. Okeh is a second-year master's degree student in the Respiratory Care program.

Academy students practice using a stethoscope and listening to each other’s heartbeats and breathing under the instruction of Godwin Okeh. Okeh is a second-year master’s degree student in the Respiratory Care program.

Students focused on such specific practical aspects as:

  • Learning how the breathing systems work and how to help medically treat them.
  • Using stethoscopes to listen to breathing and heart sounds.
  • Adapting a mechanical ventilator to a lung system model.
  • Learning about how different materials can be used to help a patient breathe.

“It’s a hands-on experience. They are learning, and they’re asking all the questions that I expected they would ask,” Wiggins said. “They were already making the connections that we haven’t even introduced or taught yet.”

Acknowledging that the workshop deepened and clarified their understanding, Academy students Logan Gipson and Dezmond Clemmons both gave the experience a positive review.

“The fake heart, I like how that worked. To just to be able to feel that and with the stethoscopes, we got to hear them and check if they have breathing problems or not,” Gipson said. “It sounded really cool because then I heard someone else’s heartbeat.” He then mimicked the sound. “And that was cool to me.”