Students dive into healthcare

By: Bailee Farrens, Contributing Writer

Many exciting opportunities happened for Centralia High School (CHS) students this past summer. ​

One of those opportunities included a Mini Med School camp held at the University of Missouri’s School of Medicine. 

Two CHS seniors, Claire Brinkman and Juliana Dollens attended the Med School camp. To be eligible for this camp, students had to attend a high school in Missouri and have a GPA of at least 3.0. 

Brinkman attended the clinic June 1-5, whereas Dollens attended June 9-13. When attending the camp, both girls stayed in dorms on campus, with assigned roommates. The learning was done in the Med School’s patient based learning center. Each day, students had a rigid schedule, beginning with breakfast at 7 a.m. Their day was full of lectures, laboratory work and learning activities that were stretched out until 7 p.m. 

The camp was filled with various challenging tasks and situations. “I had to learn skills like CPR, the Heimlich maneuver, laryngoscopy, etc. It wasn’t really challenging though,” said Dollens. Throughout their time there, both Dollens and Brinkman became certified to use a tourniquet through the Stop The Bleed program.  

Dollens plans to become a physician, so this clinic was extremely crucial to seeing what her future would look like. “I learned that Oncology is my favorite specialty. That was also my biggest takeaway,” Dollens said. Coming into this camp, Brinkman had hesitations on whether or not being in the medical field was for her. However, after attending, she is certain of her choice. “I wanted to attend so I could see if this is truly the career path for me, and I figured out that this is definitely something,” Brinkman said. 

Both students took a lot away from this camp, whether it was tools they will use in the future, the hands-on activities, or even learning what a career in the medical field will look like. 

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