WESTVILLE | Whitney Brown enrolled in summer camp to find out if her chosen career path will gross her out.

The brand new LaPorte High School graduate is spending this week in a special nursing program at Purdue University North Central, which means "cortege" to test her tolerance for seeing blood -- "to make sure my stomach can handle it."

Brown and 17 other area teens in the "Discover Nursing" camp spent Monday testing out tools of the trade, like aneroid sphygmomanometers -- medical lingo for blood pressure cuffs -- and learning about the variety of types of nursing.


PNC nursing professor Beth Starnes had encouraging words for Brown and the others.

"Even if you pass out at the sight of blood, you can still be a nurse," she said, describing nursing placement from emergency rooms to home health care to child psychiatry. A nurse anesthesiologist may get better hours and better pay, "but the insurance (premiums) will kill you," she said.

Underwritten by Nursing 2000 North and the Northwest Indiana Area Health Education Center, the four-day camp offers region high schoolers interested in nursing careers a hands-on chance to test their commitment before enrolling in a nursing program.

The final two days will be spent at Michigan City and LaPorte hospitals following the progress of mock patients through the emergency, laboratory, dietary, x-ray and other departments.

Kouts High School students Beverly Kinder and Jill Turner learned about the program through a nursing job-shadow they took part in this past year as juniors.

Kinder likes nursing because of the challenge and helping others. But she needs to decide between it and music education, which are equal in her interests right now.

Turner is more set in her direction, but she enrolled in the program just to be sure.

"I'm 99 percent sure I want to be a nurse," Turner said, adding that she's also 99 percent sure labor/delivery is the specialty she wants to pursue.

Discover Nursing summer camps will be repeated later in the summer at Indiana University Northwest, Purdue University Calumet, Valparaiso University and two other locations across northern Indiana. The program is a partnership between hospitals and schools of nursing to address an emerging critical nursing shortage.