HELENA — “And you’re done! Look at that,” Carroll College nursing student Taylar Greene told her patients while administering a COVID-19 vaccine dose. “I will give you a band-aid now.”
Looking over Greene’s shoulder is a medical professional, watching and providing a signature of confirmation of the process. The extra set of eyes are required for Greene and others administering the shots because they are all Carroll College students.
This clinic is designed to get the vaccine into the arms of Carroll students and staff, while giving students majoring in health fields valuable real-world experience.
“This specific opportunity is just building my confidence and it's making me feel more comfortable so when I actually get out into clinical, or when I graduate, I am that much more comfortable with it," says Greene in an interview with MTN News. She is a junior majoring in nursing.
Carroll College has three different health majors putting together the vaccine clinic. By the time the clinic is over, the students will have vaccinated 100 faculty, staff, and students. The Helena Indian Alliance donated these vaccines to Carroll College and they decided to make this a teaching moment.
“This really is real-world experience,” says Kelly Parsley, the Chair of the Health Sciences and Public Health department at Carroll College. “You can't learn this in a classroom, you can't learn this from a textbook, you can learn it by doing it and one of Carrol's major tenets is to serve our community and there is no better opportunity than something like this. We're really lucky to be able to be a part of it."
“Getting everybody from public health, the students and faculty altogether in helping create this [clinic], it's kind of nerve-wracking a little bit but it's really an amazing experience," says Kali Cox, a Carroll College senior majoring in public health.
Many students say this experience has been a joy and they look forward to providing the second dose. Many learned how to use needles within their first year at Carroll College, but they say they had to be re-tested again before hosting the vaccine clinic.
