Spain Park Health Science Academy grows, reaches out for community partners

Marisa Gray knew as a young child she wanted to work in the medical field some day, but she didn’t know exactly the type of job she wanted to pursue.

With help from the Health Science Academy at Hoover’s Spain Park High School, she is now well on her way to a career in nursing. During her senior year at Spain Park two years ago, she was able to job-shadow a nurse anesthetist, and now she’s studying nursing at Jefferson State Community College.

The Health Science Academy helped her discover what she wanted to do and gave her skills to get started along the path, she said.

Gray was one of three students who today shared about their experiences at the academy with members of the medical community who visited Spain Park to see what the academy has to offer.

The Health Science Academy at Spain Park focuses on nursing, patient care, emergency medicine, sports medicine and pharmacology.

By the end of their senior year, students have the opportunity to become certified as a patient care technician or a nurse assistant, said Jason Zajac, the academy director. For those interested in emergency medicine, they’re able to take a dual enrollment course at the Jefferson State campus next door and take the certification test for basic emergency medical technicians.

There is the potential to prepare students for other certification tests, such as those for pharmacy technicians and veterinary technicians, Zajac said.

“It’s a great opportunity for the kids,” Zajac said. “They get a chance to have, at 18, certification that makes them employable right off the bat.”

Twenty-three Spain Park students are on schedule to take the nursing assistant or patient care technician exam in April, said Wendy Kendrick, a certified nurse with a doctorate in education who joined the Health Sciences Academy team this year.

If they pass, they’ll be able to get a job that pays $16 an hour, she said. That’s a good start for those going straight into the workforce and would be a much better part-time job than McDonald’s, Subway or a bookstore for those going on to college, she and Zajac said.

The same course would cost $900 to $1,000 at a college, but at Spain Park, it’s part of their free public education, and the state pays for the book and the $150 certification test, said Kendrick, who formerly taught nursing at Samford University.

When the Health Science Academy began at Spain Park in 2011, it had 46 students, Zajac said. Now in its fifth year, there are 220 students in the program, he said.

The program began in one classroom but has expanded to several more rooms, including a mock emergency room, patient exam rooms, nursing station and a pharmacy lab.

At first, there was just one mannequin on which students could practice, but thanks to a $227,000 grant from the Alabama Department of Education, Spain Park was able to add additional equipment and now has four high-tech simulation mannequins, a CPR training mannequin and a standard baby mannequin.

One of the mannequins cost $60,000, and students can do virtually anything with it they could do with a real patient, Zajac said.

The mannequin simulates breathing and has heart sounds, lung sounds and a pulse in multiple locations. It can cough and talk to you to tell you if it is hurting. It even produces simulated urine, Zajac said.

The mannequin is controlled by an instructor in another room, and the instructor can watch to see if the student asks appropriate questions and assess the kind of care given. Video cameras capture the simulated patient encounters, and the students can review the footage to see how they performed, Zajac said.

“A lot of universities don’t have a setup this nice,” he said.

The Hoover City Schools Foundation today invited members of the medical community to Spain Park to see it for themselves. Guests included staff from UAB Medicine, Grandview Medical Center, Caldwell Mill Animal Clinic, medical educators at colleges, an oral surgeon and a health care equipment distributor.

The simulation labs are really impressive, said Kim Benner, a professor at the McWhorter School of Pharmacy at Samford. “This simulation unit is nicer than the one at the pharmacy school at Samford,” she said.

It’s great for students to be introduced to the variety of medical careers out there and have these experiences, said Benner, who also is a practicing pharmacist at Children’s of Alabama hospital.

She speaks at a lot of high schools about careers in pharmacy and hopes to strengthen her relationship with schools such as Spain Park, she said.

Dr. Bill Christenberry from the Caldwell Mill Animal Clinic said it’s amazing to see what the Health Sciences Academy is doing to prepare students for career decisions ahead of them.

“They can go ahead and have this under their belt and understand what they’re dealing with,” he said.

Christenberry already has been working with Spain Park. Four students came to his office to see what veterinary medicine is really all about, and he helped prepare some students for the veterinary portion of the state competition for future health professionals.

Spain Park first participated in the state competition two years ago and had nine students qualify to go to the national competition in Orlando, Zajac said.  Last year, 19 students qualified for the national competition in Anaheim, Calif., and one of them placed sixth in the nation in the physical therapy competition, he said.

Zajac said he hopes to continue strengthening partnerships between the academy and the medical community and look for more job-shadowing opportunities for students.

“We want to work with you guys to make sure we’re teaching what they need to know,” he told today’s guests.

Floyd Larkin, CEO of an emergency medical equipment company called Stop Heart Attack, today offered to donate a 12-lead electrocardiogram monitor and a bleeding control training kit to the academy.

Avi Vaidya, a senior at Spain Park this year, said he took the pharmacology course last year as a junior. He is now registered as a pharmacy technician in Alabama and waiting to take his certification test when he turns 18, he said.

He likes that his instructors have real-world experience, he said. “They kind of know what they’re talking about,” he said.

He believes his experience in the Health Science Academy will give him an advantage over other college students, he said.