For students at Peoria Unified’s MET Professional Academy, helping 100 Special Olympics Arizona athletes get ready to compete meant learning that good health care involves more than taking vital signs or performing an exam.
“I think that’s what MedFest is all about — helping real athletes take to the field, but also our students are learning that great health care is as much about your welcoming presence as it is about those clinical skills,” Peoria Unified Chief Communications Officer Danielle Airey said.
The academy hosted its fifth annual MedFest in partnership with Special Olympics Arizona on Sept. 15, providing free sports physicals for athletes while giving first-year MET medical students an opportunity to work alongside health care professionals.
About 100 athletes participated in this year’s event, Airey said. While many were Peoria Unified students, MedFest was open to Special Olympics Arizona athletes from outside the district as well.
The physicals help athletes meet requirements to participate in Arizona Interscholastic Association sports. At the same time, MET students get to apply skills they have been learning since the beginning of the school year.
“The students that are in the MET Professional Academy, they’re first-year medical students that get to have the real-world, hands-on experience of working with those athletes to participate in the physicals,” Airey said. “So they take their vitals, they do the vision testing and they get to interact with them just like they’re interacting with an actual patient.”
Athletes began their visit by checking in with Special Olympics Arizona before being greeted by a MET student, similar to the process a patient might experience at a medical office.
Students guided athletes through the different stages of the physical, taking vital signs such as blood pressure, pulse and oxygen levels before accompanying them to vision testing and an examination with a clinician.
Health care providers and clinicians from Creighton University and Midwestern University worked alongside the students, providing supervision and demonstrating how to interact with and care for patients.
For MET students, MedFest comes early in their medical education. Students from high schools across Peoria Unified can participate in the program and spend half of their school day at the academy. First-year students begin learning basic medical skills shortly after the school year starts.
MedFest gives them an opportunity to put those lessons to use with real patients.
“The learning takes place not just in the classroom through this program,” Airey said. “The learning is taking place through this hands-on experience that they are receiving.”
Those lessons extend beyond clinical skills. Students practice communication, professionalism and compassion while interacting directly with athletes. They also get an early opportunity to determine whether working in health care is something they want to pursue.
“They’re demonstrating professionalism, communication, compassion, and all of that is part of what defines good care,” Airey said.
For athletes and their families, the event provides local access to a required service at no cost. Airey said removing that barrier can make it easier for athletes to get onto the field, court or wherever else they compete.
“It’s all about access for families,” Airey said. “Providing that access to families so we can get these student-athletes on the field and get them engaged in athletics.”
The partnership began five years ago with Dr. Stephanie Herrick Kays, a Peoria Unified parent who Airey said saw an opportunity to bring together the district, MET Professional Academy and Special Olympics Arizona.
Kays, who Airey said is medical director for Special Olympics and a clinician with Creighton University, recognized that MedFest could simultaneously provide a service to athletes and create a hands-on learning opportunity for students.
“It was Dr. Stephanie Herrick Kays, who saw a way to both mobilize the community, support learning for our MET medical students and help Special Olympics athletes,” Airey said.
The partnership initially involved Midwestern University and later expanded to include Creighton University. Professionals from the universities oversee medical care and work directly with MET students throughout the event.
Airey said the clinicians guide students, answer questions and demonstrate what the relationship between a health care provider and patient should look like. That interaction also gives students access to professionals who can help them explore potential careers.
The experience is part of MET Professional Academy’s broader approach to career education. Students later participate in internships and work with mentors, potentially exposing them to specialties they had not considered.
Airey said that exploration can help students determine whether medicine is right for them — and, if it is, which direction they may want to take before they graduate from high school.
The district’s relationship with Special Olympics Arizona also extends beyond MedFest. Peoria Unified offers Unified Sports programs at its high schools, while Raymond S. Kellis High School hosts a major Special Olympics event each year.
But for the students who spent MedFest taking vital signs, guiding athletes through examinations and learning beside health care professionals, Airey said she hopes one lesson stands out beyond the medical skills they practiced.
“We hope they remember that the care and the support that they provide to the community matters just as much as those clinical skills that they’re learning,” Airey said.
The MET Professional Academy is a CAPS Network affiliate located in Peoria, Arizona.
The original article published by the Glendale Star can be found here.
