FARMINGTON — Nearly 60 students are learning about health career opportunities this week during the annual Scrub Club Camp at Franklin Memorial Hospital.

By the end of the camp they will have been certified in CPR, learned first aid and created no-sew fleece blankets to give to three area facilities.

The weeklong day camp is sponsored by FMH and a University of Maine at Farmington program, Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduates Program, also known as GEAR UP.

Volunteers from FMH, NorthStar ambulance service and the university provide activities that instruct, challenge and allow area students from grades eight through high school to explore aspects of medicine. Some activities include suturing pigs’ feet, giving shots, responding to a mock accident or drilling and filling a cavity on a dental simulator.

Teams of about 10 students rotate activities from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Gowned, gloved and ready to stitch, team members struggled to suture the cuts made in the hide of a pig’s foot Wednesday under the instruction of  physician assistant Betsy Norton.

“It’s pretty popular. They always ask for it (the suturing lab),” she said.

“Pull, pull, pull,” she said, while promising student Emily Hardy of Mt. Abram High School that “human skin isn’t as tough.”

Learning to give shots by injecting oranges, the students are quizzed on their knowledge of the metric system in order to get the dosages right.

Camp volunteers also help guide them toward what courses, especially math and science, they’ll need for some medical careers, Karen Rogers, director of education at FMH, said.

Along with the cooperation of FMH employees, the camp receives funding from the Western Maine Area Health Education Center (AHEC) Network, which is devoted to encouraging Maine youth and mid-career workers to explore health careers. It’s an effort to help alleviate health professional shortages in Maine’s rural and underserved areas, she explained.

Funding from AHEC also provides a school bus to bring students from Dixfield, Rumford and Jay to the Scrub Club Camp.

Along with the suturing Wednesday morning, one team was participating in a disability demonstration while another learned more about dentistry and being a dental assistant using a dental simulator.

David Burtt of the University of New England’s College of Dental Medicine used the simulator to show students how to drill and fill a cavity, while MacKenzie Dwyer from Mt. Blue served as his assistant and learned to hold the instruments for the dentist. Other students then tried being dentists and dental assistants.

The students also spent time on a Scrub Club project. This year they are preparing fleece blankets to present Friday to representatives from Edgewood Assisted Living Center, Safe Voices and Franklin County Animal Shelter, Amy Gatchell, the college access coordinator for Spruce Mountain High School, said.

Each team will  give a presentation Friday on what they have learned this week.

The camp also provides an opportunity for the students to make new friends, learn people and leadership skills and go outside their comfort zones, Dixie Bonnevie of Jay, who works for GEAR UP, said.

The GEAR UP program offers tutoring and mentoring, activities on UMF’s campus as well as after-school and summer programs to help students in rural schools work toward achieving more than a high school diploma. They work primarily with students from Mountain Valley High School in Rumford, Dirigo in Dixfield and Spruce Mountain, formerly Jay High School.

This fourth year of the camp, students were turned away and put on a waiting list. Some have returned each year. Students from Mt. Blue, Mt. Abram, Rangeley, Carrabec, Mountain Valley, Dirigo, Spruce Mountain, Livermore Falls and a couple from New Hampshire are attending the camp.

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