DECATUR, Ala. — Calhoun’s Nursing and Allied Health departments, in partnership with Decatur Morgan Hospital and Athens-Limestone Hospital, host Let's Pretend Hospital, which provides first graders with 'friendly' and age-appropriate information about what actually takes place when someone is admitted to the hospital. The event will run from 9:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m. each day. During the week of April 10-13, 2023, Calhoun Community College will see close to 1,200 area first graders descend on its Decatur campus to take part in the Annual Let’s Pretend Hospital.
Kelsey Robinson said area first graders are going to each room, and nursing students are telling them a little bit about it. "We have an admission room, we have an x-ray room, we have a discharge room, emergency room. Like in one room there is a patient and like a mom and a dad and they just went, and they would just describe what would happen in each room just to make it seem not so scary in case in case the child had to go to the emergency room," said Robinson.
Calhoun community College Nursing Department Chair Lynn Hogan said nursing students work to set up a kid friendly hospital in their health sciences building, and they invite first graders in Limestone and Morgan County city schools and county schools to come and experience what it would be like to visit the hospital,"...in a safe environment for the children to interact with health care providers and to learn about what it's like to be in the hospital in a patient room, x-ray in the lab to go to surgery. they go in the ambulance, all the different experiences that a child might see in the hospital. So that they have a little bit of knowledge about it when they may experience that at some point in their life," Hogan explained.
Nursing student Alyssa Wilken said it is important that the students have this experience because it gets them involved in learning more about the health care setting. "Seeing what it's like to get their x-ray taken or getting some blood drawn. it just helps them to not be as scared," Wilken iterated.