When a Villanova football player is surrounded by women and men wearing white coats and scrubs, it typically is pretty safe to assume they are in some serious pain.
Last week, however, the athletes being transferred to and from beds thankfully had not sustained any injuries on the field, but instead were lending a hand to the sophomores in a Protective Positions Skill Lab - part of the Practicum in Essentials of Nursing Practice course. During certain lab periods in February, nursing students gained experience in safely pulling up the players – weighing between 200 to over 300 pounds - in bed, assisting them from the bed to a chair, transferring them from bed to gurney and ensuring the “patients” were comfortable.
“It’s good for us to get this hands-on experience, especially with people who are bigger than us,” said student Jacqueline Cembrook. “A lot of the time, we’re working on other nursing students, who are all about the same size. In a real hospital setting, you’ll have to work with men and women who are larger than you.”
Brittany Wyatt, another student, agreed, saying the lab “puts you in an uncomfortable position because you don’t know them - it’s like a clinical experience.”
