Camp Curriculum 

The camp curriculum objectives included: 1) orient campers to the role of the nurse, 2) expose campers to various specialties within nursing, 3) promote understanding of career opportunities in nursing, 4) identify nursing influence in patient care, and 5) outline educational prerequisites for entry into a nursing school. To meet the objectives a variety of activities/sessions were designed. We started the camp off with team building exercises. Team building exercises allowed the campers to become acquainted with one another and build team working skills of listening, problem solving, and cooperation. Overview of nursing fields included: maternity/pediatrics – baby swaddling, bathing, feeding, diapering, and transfer from one to another; critical care – vital signs, pulse oximeter, EKG; and medical/surgical – making an occupied bed and checking name bands before medication administration.  Nursing care issues were introduced in sessions of: infection control – transfer of organisms using various colored glitter and hand shaking, as well as hand washing using glo germ; nutrition and exercise – food pyramid, food sample comparisons, pedometers; wound care – manikin wound examples and dressing a basic wound; CPR – community American Heart Association course; nursing psychomotor skills –  obstacle course where teams competed in a course using healthcare related equipment, as well as using skills that they were taught (such as giving compressions); and problem solving – scavenger hunt where written clues of various equipment used by nurses with puzzle piece prizes to complete a group puzzle were used as an activity. All the nursing sessions and activities were held at the university.

A call for counselors was placed by email and word of mouth to chapter members. All faculty, alumni, and members provided encouragement for the idea of a camp. Thankfully fourteen individuals were able to assure a time commitment to make the camp happen. Two program planners organized the administrative needs of the camp (advertising, weekly session organization, hospital & ambulance tour, space reservations, budget and finances, etc). Fours members were able to work at the camp most days of the week. Another 10 members helped to design camp sessions and work from a few hours to a couple days during the week. This worked well providing at least four to six nurse counselors physically at the camp each day to organize sessions, assist the 11 campers in activities, and provide the campers with individualize attention and expertise. 

The designs of various topic sessions were assigned to volunteer members and activities for each session were scheduled for 1 ½ hours. The assignment of sessions decreased the work load of the camp administrative planners and allowed for the creativity and experience of each volunteer to be used. Each volunteer who designed a session was also able to showcase their nursing specialty and expertise, as each volunteer geared the session around their clinical specialty. This allowed for the campers to truly receive cutting edge information while having it presented to them on a developmentally appropriate level.

The sessions were designed to fill five hours of activities for each of the four days at the university (see table 1). Since this was the first year of the camp, each designer was encouraged to over prepare activities for each topic session. This would allow the counselors to keep the campers engaged for the allotted time and have a couple back up activities if the first activities went quickly. The back up activities were used and proved to be some of the more favored activities of the week. One of the time fillers that was very effective and provided a creative outlet for the campers was the designing of art and craft activity pages. A variety of stickers, nursing pictures cut from nursing journals, and foam letters were used by the campers to design collages or memory pages of session topics.  The activity was effective in calming down the campers physically and emotionally from some of the more energizing session activities. Some of the memory pages included asking the campers to write a sentence or two reflecting on the previous session or to answer session specific questions about what they learned. This broke up the monotony of using the binder strictly for arts and crafts. The memory pages also allowed the campers to share with their parents what they were doing and being exposed to each day during the camp. This was especially appreciated by the parents.

Collaboration

As with the profwell ession of nursing, we recognized that the camp would be most effective if we took a multidisciplinary approach. The team building activity was scheduled as the first session on the first day of the camp.  The session was contracted for a fee from the Adventure Program, a company run by university Kinesiology faculty during the summer. The Adventure Program all faculty had the experience and equipment to run two team building sessions. The first involved a variety of name games and problem solving/active learning games using knotted ropes, different types of handshakes and identifying adjectives for each campers name. When the campers first arrived they were shy toward one another. However, after the first team building session they knew each others names and were having fun. The second team building session at the end of the week involved active learning using team building and memory. For example, all campers stood on a blanket; they had to complete tasks as a team such as folding the blanket in half, or turning it over without anyone stepping off of the blanket. At the end of each session the Adventure Program director talked to the campers about how they were able to accomplish the assigned activities using teamwork, communication, listening, and patience.  The fee of $200 for the activity program was built into the camp budget, but was well worth the fee as it was one less session the organizers had design for the new camp.

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