HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Well, up, up and away! Local Madison County, Madison City, and Huntsville City School students are ready for takeoff as UAH College of Nursing hosts its annual Let's Pretend Hospital this week. This year's theme is space, and the program gives kids a low-stress look at how a hospital works.
Lauren Whatley is a Senior Nursing Student at UAH, and Whatley's role at this year's Let's Pretend Hospital is CEO. "We want to expose kids to a friendly version of the hospital. If they ever were to have to go to a hospital, say they have a broken arm or they have the flu, if they don't know what to expect, then that can kind of be scarring for them. So we have a space and we have our nursing students all dressed up as aliens. That's really fun and inviting exciting things and things that the students would enjoy."
Each day about five hundred local first graders will attend from Madison County, Madison City, and Huntsville City Schools. Let's Pretend Hospital Faculty Coordinator Dr. Melissa Foster explained that this is their 35th year for Let's Pretend Hospital. "We did take some years off, of course, COVID. And then, there was another year that we took off for building spaces, that type of thing. We started this program with Huntsville Hospital as a kind of outreach to educate the children."
Furthermore, Foster shares that what is most special about this event is every year they hear moving stories that inspire their team to keep pressing forward. "For example, we had one child that had been through let's pretend hospital and a couple of weeks later he needed to go and have surgery, having his tonsils out. And his mom was very upset and very nervous and she was trying to calm him down and he said, mom, I got this. I went to Let's Pretend Hospital. So it helps them to be more comfortable, and so we get those little tidbits. And so we know this is a very valuable program that we do. We do it with Huntsville Hospital. So they do the scheduling of all the schools, all the programs, and then we do the execution here."