Coaching In The Classroom

FARMINGTON STUDENTS LEARN LIVE-SAVING MEASURES

MARK HUMPHREY ENTERPRISE-LEADER New full-size medical charts make Brad Johnson's teaching job easier. He used to have to draw heart diagrams out on a blackboard. Johnson teaches Advanced Health as part of the Career Academies courses.
MARK HUMPHREY ENTERPRISE-LEADER New full-size medical charts make Brad Johnson's teaching job easier. He used to have to draw heart diagrams out on a blackboard. Johnson teaches Advanced Health as part of the Career Academies courses.

FARMINGTON -- A loose ball knocked into the backcourt sends both teams scrambling for control late in the fourth quarter of a high school basketball game.

If Farmington had possession prior to the ball getting jarred loose, head girls basketball coach Brad Johnson would simply call time-out the instant one of the Lady Cardinals got a hand on the basketball whether they had full control or not. Such is a common tactic employed by coaches to retain possession, especially when the game is on the line.

According to School Nurse Tiffany Rogers CNA certification is not yet available among Farmington Career Academies programs.

“That is not offered on our campus. Hopefully down the road we’ll be able to offer it,” Rogers said.

Rogers said a Farmington student did achieve CNA certification two years ago during her senior year while splitting time between the high school campus and taking Northwest Technical Institute concurrent credit courses.

“She was working as a CNA at a local extended-care facility during her senior year,” Rogers said.

Farmington students can also take concurrent credit courses to obtain a CNA certification through Northwest Arkansas Community College.

Yet, life presents emergency situations that aren't always that cut and dried. There is no time-out during a crisis.

Preparation and training empower first responders and citizens to cope with emergencies. Those concepts are what Johnson conveys to Farmington Career Academies students as he teaches Advanced Health.

"First of all the whole premise of offering Advanced Health to high school students is to give us an opportunity to look at a different side of health," Johnson explains. "What we did was really targeted things like CPR. There is a need for that. We use the school nurse and the kids get certified with a program through the American Red Cross. Through knowing CPR and being certified the potential to save a life becomes greater."

Students learn field triage such as wound identification and understanding the difference when faced with different types of wounds themselves or while assessing a victim. They study different types of burns and how to treat them.

"Students learn what an emergency survival chain is," Johnson said. "All that, even as something as simple as a 911 call can help save a life."

According to the American Heart Association, a chain of survival depicts critical actions required to treat life-threatening emergencies, including heart attack, cardiac arrest, stroke, and foreign body airway obstruction. Links within this survival chain include: early access to the emergency response system; early CPR to support circulation to the heart and brain until normal heart activity is restored; early defibrillation to treat cardiac arrest caused by ventricular fibrillation; and early advanced care by EMTS and medical professionals.

"We get kids familiar with an A.E.D. (automated external defibrillator)," Johnson said. "Twenty-five years ago the average person didn't know much about an A.E.D. We don't want our students to just know where the A.E.D.s are (on campus) in an emergency, we want them being comfortable to get an A.E.D. and use it."

Johnson knows first-hand the value of having an A.E.D. on hand and having confidence to utilize the device properly. Nearly three years ago on Jan. 29, 2015, Ella Wilson checked out of a freshman game at Shiloh Christian then collapsed on the bench and went into cardiac arrest. Junior High coach Jessica McCollough yelled for help and Dr. Pete Ball, a Farmington parent, used an A.E.D. to jump-start Wilson's heart. Wilson is now a senior.

The most-recent shockwave sent tremors through the Farmington student body and Lady Cardinal girls basketball program after what seemed a typical practice. On Oct. 19, sophomore guard Makenna Vanzant, 15, was taken to Arkansas Children's Hospital at Little Rock. A week later she was diagnosed with hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), which according to the Mayo Clinic, is a condition caused by the abnormal destruction of red blood cells.

"I didn't know a whole lot about HUS," Johnson said.

He and Makenna's teammates have had a crash course in learning about the uncommon condition.

At the same time, Johnson carries on with his teaching duties. On the second floor of Farmington High School Johnson's classroom resembles a hospital room. Two adjustable hospital beds are situated side-by-side with a life-like medical dummy occupying one.

"We take this dummy and teach kids how to handle certain situations," Johnson said. "He breathes. We can take kids through a face-down victim and show them how to roll them over, how to save a life, and how to maneuver a victim."

"The career academies are very student-focused," Johnson said. "We're giving students a sneak-peak of something they might want to do as a career."

"They get an opportunity to experience some of this. Some of them may have thought they knew what they wanted to do for a career, but they may change their mind. For those, who might want to go into the medical field, they're not having to wait until they get to college or after they graduate to figure that out. What an advantage to someone still in high school."

General News on 11/22/2017