Nursing Students Learn Real-World Skills from Air Flight Nurse, Alumna
Nursing Students Learn Real-World Skills from Air Flight Nurse, Alumna
Senior II nursing students at Georgia Southern University received some insight from alumna and Air-Evac Lifeteam flight nurse, Stacey Tapley (‘03), when she visited the School of Nursing on March 12 to share her knowledge of real-life emergency and disaster training.
Tapley, along with several fellow Air-Evac Lifeteam members, met with students in Advanced Medical Surgical Nursing instructor Marie Graf’s class for the Mock Codes, Emergency Nursing and Disaster Training Day. Graf created this learner-centered instructional activity to provide students an opportunity to practice emergency nursing care using anatomically correct life-like models, as well as live actors.
"Alumna Stacy Tapley made a commitment to give back to the university that provided her education foundation. By interacting with Senior 2 Nursing Students during Mock Codes, Emergency Nursing and Disaster Training Day, Stacey provided nursing students with opportunities to learn real-world emergency nursing skills in simulated critical situations,” said Graf. “As a Flight Nurse for Air-Evac Lifeteam 95, Stacey not only builds on the educational foundation that she received as a Georgia Southern nursing student, but is now teaching those that follow in her footsteps. The Senior 2 nursing students interacted well with Stacey as she demonstrated appropriate emergency nursing skills that flight nurses perform every day. Learning real-world emergency nursing skills will, in effect, help these future nurses save patients lives."
Tapley and other Air-Evac Lifeteam members discussed several skills including airway management with endotracheal intubation and used mannequins of all sizes (neonatal, pediatric and adult) to demonstrate. The students watched and listened first to the flight crew members as they explained the procedure and the techniques used, and then had the chance to perform the procedure themselves with oversight from the flight crew.
The students also learned about EZ-IO (intraosseous) insertion, which is similar to an IV but it is inserted into a bone. These are used a lot in trauma patients or patients that are coding from cardiac or pulmonary arrest, Tapley explained.
“Being a Georgia Southern School of Nursing graduate myself, I felt it important to share our skills and career path with the nursing students to show them another avenue that nursing could offer them,” Tapley said. “Having the hands on time with some of the skills and procedures that we do every day in the aircraft is an experience that some of these students may have never had the opportunity to see let alone practice before. And they did an amazing job - many of the students performed the procedure with little to no assistance from the flight crew.”
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