My name is Arielle Cummings. I am currently a student at Portage High School. I am enrolled in the Career and Technical Education class of Medical Terminology/Anatomy Physiology. My class voted me on as a Classroom Representative and a board of member for the Health Occupation Students of America.
My teacher, Mrs. Lynn Wilson, puts her time, patience, and utmost efforts in providing every opportunity for us succeed in our future careers. The anatomy portion of our class provides knowledge of how the human body functions. So far this year, we’ve learned Integumentary, Skeletal, Nervous, Cardiovascular, and the Digestive systems. Class lessons provide us with information and knowledge of the structure and functions of the body systems.
For the medical terminology portion of the class, we study the ways in which professional’s use and breakdown medical vocabulary. We learn to dissect large medical words and we learn main roots, diseases, prefixes, and suffixes that correspond to certain body functions. As we further our experiences in the classroom, we learn medical based skills called competencies. These are medical skill sets that we are required to pass, as in hand washing or gloving/ungloving, so that we know how to prevent and protect ourselves from the patient or disease. We’ve also learned some important skills on how to assess patients by taking vital signs or if a doctor or nurse needs assistance transferring instruments or running the steam sterilizer, we can offer assistance.
One more critical component of our class is job shadowing. Job shadowing at North Shore Community Clinic allows each student an opportunity to over see the skills of a professional healthcare worker on the job. These experiences, of working with healthcare professionals, ads true life experiences, in the field, to what I am actively learning in the classroom. Next year, I will be a senior enrolling in Health Occupations, which is a course that will allow me to get my certification as a Nurse Assistant. I feel that by taking this course I am ahead of the competition I will face when enrolling in college.