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Tarzana Hospital Hosts Girl Scout Medical Day

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Contributed by: Kimberlie Nitti on 4/1/2008

When a colleague suggested their hospital host a "Medical Day" for local Girl Scouts, Lynn Miles, RN, a nurse educator at Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center in Tarzana, California, seized the opportunity and ran.

As a former Girl Scout troop leader, Miles believed Medical Day would be an ideal way to introduce impressionable young girls to dozens of career options in the healthcare field, including speech pathology, physical therapy, imaging technology, various physician specialities, and nursing.

"Girls these days are giving serious consideration to what they plan to do in life at increasingly younger ages," Miles said. "12 to 15 years old is a perfect window of opportunity to show girls what's out there, career-wise."

Hospital CEO Dale Surowitz readily agreed, and gave local council Girl Scouts of the San Fernando Valley the green light to invite 100 junior high and high school-aged Girl Scouts to visit the hospital's Tarzana campus on Saturday, March 29, 2008.

Participating Girl Scouts divided into smaller teams of 10 and embarked on a whirlwind series of nine "rotations" through different areas of the hospital: ER, Cardiac/Respiratory CVU, Cath Lab, Surgery, Physical Therapy, CAT Scan/X-Ray, Lab/Blood Bank, and the Women's Pavilion. There was also a "Career Center" rotation in the hospital's auditorium, where girls could peruse table displays and meet with staff members - including a pharmacist, a registered dietitian, speech pathologists, and two female physicians -- who volunteered to talk about their careers. There was also a representative from a local nursing school program, and a booth hosted by the hospital's nursing recruitment and retention department offering novelty "syringe" pens, heart-shaped EKG stickers, custom "Be a Nurse!" M & M candies, and colorful poster board displays and handouts. Watching the girls eagerly posing for Polaroid photos dressed up in surgical caps, gowns, and masks, Director of Surgical Services Marleen Hafer, RN, said she found the girls' interest encouraging.

"One of the best things about an event like this is that we can expose girls to different types of nursing, many of which they never even knew existed," Hafer said. "For some of these girls, the only nurses they've ever encountered have been in their pediatrician's office. They don't know about nurses who work in the OR, or labor and delivery nurses, or nurses like me, who work in hospital administration."

Hafer herself was a Girl Scout, growing up in her hometown of New Orleans, and is well aware of the Girl Scout mission to provide girls with opportunities to fulfill their own potential and make the world a better place.

"These are girls who genuinely want to make a difference and to help other people, " Hafer said. "If an event like Girl Scout Medical Day can spark a girl's interest in joining the healthcare profession, we feel it's definitely time well spent."

The idea for Medical Day came from cardiothoracic anesthesiologist Joseph Nitti, M.D., after he heard about a successful Girl Scout Law Day event at a local courthouse.

"I thought to myself, the world already has more than enough lawyers. What we really need are more healthcare professionals."

Dr. Nitti invited colleagues from other hospital departments to get involved, then helped put together a surgical rotation that introduced girls to various operating room monitors and machines and anesthetic gases. Each girl also received her very own stethoscope and was instructed in how to properly use it.

"I don't care what you see on 'Grey's Anatomy,'" he told one group of girls, draping a stethoscope around the back of his neck, "real doctors and nurses wear their stethoscopes like this."

Girl Scouts also had a chance to examine surgical clamps and retractors, and to try their hand at a mock laproscopy procedure - extracting Thin Mint cookies from the "belly" of a laproscopic simulator.

"Say what you will about video games and text messaging," Lynn Miles observed, "but these girls have fantastic manual dexterity. The future looks bright for medicine, that's for sure."

Next on the hospital's agenda - "Take Your Child to Work Day" in April, a nation-wide event that staff members enthusiastically participate in every year. Scheduled activities include tours of the hospital, a laproscopy of a piece of raw chicken breast, and a "craniotomy" performed on a pumpkin by a pediatric surgeon.

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