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Naval Hospital Jacksonville giving kids hands-on experience

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Darnell-Cookman High School students are getting hands-on medical experience at Naval Hospital Jacksonville.

Monday kicked off day one of the annual "Science, Service, Medicine and Mentoring", or S2M2, internship.

Action News Jax spent time with students beginning their rotations in the operating room (OR). The students scrubbed in and sterilized as if they were going into an actual OR. Just over a dozen students learned the importance of maintaining a sterile environment.

“It is very hard to keep clean," said Ricardo Stewart, an S2M2 participant. "There are so many ways to get dirty!”

A single mistake is all it takes to compromise the entire operation.

“And then if like one part gets dirty you have to do the whole thing over again,” Stewart said.

Many of these future doctors have yet to see a real-life hospital setting in this capacity. On Monday they were able to separate what's real and what's not.

“I watch a lot television shows about this and it’s nothing like you see on television,” Stewart said.

Students will rotate from the operating room to the pharmacy, physical therapy, primary care, and inpatient units. They'll also take part in discussions, workshops, and job-shadowing. Students will eventually move into the simulation center.

"They're learning some of the basic skills that our corpsman learn from combat as well," said Matthew Case, commanding officer of Naval Hospital Jacksonville.

They'll have a chance to practice orthopedic procedures on artificial bones, and receive field medicine training on a tactical combat casualty care course. The participants were selected from a pool of applicants.

"They are extremely bright," said Case. "I had the pleasure of talking to them this morning and I was blown away by ready and excited and prepared they were for this week."

Naval Hospital Jacksonville started hosting S2M2 students in 2010.