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Silsbee High School students in PPE pose with crushed watermelon pieces
The Patient Care Technician students in Heather Wiggins’ Health Science class at Silsbee High School have been learning the importance of personal protective equipment (PPE), when to wear it, and how to wear it correctly.
Wiggins created a lab exercise to demonstrate the effectiveness of PPE by assigning students the roles of a surgical team.
The team consisted of the chief surgeon who was responsible for holding the watermelon patient still, a charge nurse who gave the instructions to the team and made sure everything was flowing perfectly, the materials manager who distributed the rubber bands, scrub nurse who kept track and counted all the rubber bands, the timer who recorded the length of the “surgery,” and the surgical team who worked in pairs to apply the rubber bands onto the watermelon aka “patient.”
The goal of the experiment was to work together as a team to make the watermelon explode to test the effectiveness of always wearing their PPE correctly. The junior and senior students were divided into two teams.
The seniors exploded their watermelon first and won the “Most Efficient Team Award.” The supplies for the experiment were donated by Lamar State College Port Arthur.