Every year, the Interventions in Biomedical Science class is instructed to create an interactive project for a certain class at St. Luke's regarding their own field of interest. As it is my time to finally have my outreach project, I had to brainstorm something that could be a replicated to simulate surgery. I decided to ask Ms. Thompson at the Lower Campus if I could teach one of her science elective classes. We found it was best that I come to a 4th grade class of 23 students. With that age group, I brought equipment so they can suture bananas to simulate closing up incisions in surgery. I started off will arriving early to set up everyone's places. Each seat had a suturing packet, alcohol packet, germx, a banana with an incision, surgical isolation gowns, and a handout I created about my field of interest. I presented a slideshow to them in the beginning about general surgery and the different types of sutures they use. I showed them pictures and a youtube video of what we would be doing next. I found that it would be easiest to show them continuous sutures so they did not have to learn to tie any knots. I taught them about the importance of a sterile field by telling them about handwashing and proper scrubbing in for surgery. Once they cleaned their banana, they started to begin suturing. Many 4th graders did a great job off the bat with their sutures, and other needed a little more assistance. I walked around and helped anyone that needed it. After they were finished, I taught them the importance of properly disposing the sharps by putting them all in a sharps container. I enjoyed watching all the children suture and felt like it was the perfect outreach project for my field of interest! Many children informed me that they also wanted to be a surgeon one day as well!
Here is a link to my Outreach Project!
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