Corpus Christi (KIII News) — The Wesley Community Center is helping the nursing students at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi get hands-on experience with younger patients through a new partnership.
The partnership between the center and the TAMU-CC nursing program started Aug. 27 allowing students to help with wellness checks as well as getting to interact with the kids.
For TAMU-CC nursing students Kristian Beltran and Demitri Baxter learning in the classroom and being one on one with a patient are entirely different.
"Kids are sponges, it's best to teach them now when they're going to kind of listen to what you're saying so to speak and demonstrating is the best way because they're going to do what you do," Beltran said.
Executive Director Malinda Conway Faugh agrees that the new program will fill the gaps.
"Dr. Hoff said she has 80 -90 students every semester and some of them have never held babies, they've never fed babies, they've never changed babies," Faugh said. "It just brings a whole other dynamic to the social determinants of health for children and families."
Nursing students will conduct health checks and teach children about proper hygiene and motor skills.
"Washing hands make sure we cover when they a cough make sure to cough in your arm," Baxter said. "Making sure that they have the developmental milestones that correlate with their age."
Students also get interact with the kids who are what mother Karyn Hazel is pleased about.
"This is our future they're our future, and I would like to know and believe they're going to help our children out as best they can," Hazel said.
Currently, there are 80 kids enrolled at the Wesley Community Center.
For the next three months, the nursing students will be doing rotations at the center twice a week.
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