Humanity has reached incredible lengths by working together. We see this from something as simple as playing a team sport, all the way to sending people into space. Most importantly, people can work together to save the lives of others. Grossmont trains their allied health and nursing students to work together by hosting an event for the whole department called Hospital Day.

Hospital Day, also called IPE Day, which stands for interprofessional experience, is an annual event that involves students from all disciplines in the allied health and nursing department to work together and complete several tasks planned out for them. Due to COVID, this event has been pushed from its original date of March 18th to May 6th after the department discussed whether they wanted to continue with the event, postpone it or outright cancel it. 

Liz Barrow, the program coordinator of health and nursing technology, said in an email that for Hospital Day, “the students work as a team to prioritize and perform patient-centered care.”

Hospitals require massive amounts of teamwork and cooperation to treat a patient successfully, and that is what the allied health and nursing department teach their students. Putting students in hands-on situations that simulate the real working world is an essential factor of Hospital Day. Barrow also says that members work by listening to everyone’s ideas and opinions to complete their tasks. Students are encouraged to share their thoughts and circulate ideas with each other.

Most importantly, she explains that on Hospital Day, students are  faced with ethical dilemmas and must manage these tricky situations with the principles of excellence, caring, ethics, respect, and accountability. Overall, Hospital Day is an enjoyable event for everyone involved in the health and nursing program.

“It’s one of the funnest days we have all semester,” said Nancy Saks, the Sr. Dean of the health and nursing department. 

Saks said that the students come together and perform their respective roles that they learned at Grossmont and that Hospital Day gives the students real-world experience that will be of use when they’re out in an actual health care setting. When it comes to what the students are to achieve, each has extensive knowledge of orthopedics, nursing, respiratory, etc. Each of these disciplines is important to the well-being of patients.

Saks says Hospital Day is where students show their specific discipline knowledge to their peers. The last Hospital Day was in 2020, before the COVID pandemic caused a worldwide shutdown. Grossmont had to switch to a primarily online learning environment and, for that reason, did not include a Hospital Day for their students in 2021. 

Hospital Day won the Innovators of the Year award for 2017-2018. One person typically gets this award, but the whole department earned the award that year for coming up with Hospital Day. 

Fortunately, health and nursing students will experience this fun and meaningful event this year. Maybe these students will work together in the same hospital in the future and use the skills they learned on Hospital Day to save real lives.