Children offered a peek into the OR

Suiting up in scrubs and walking through the double doors of the operating room on a recent Sunday were pint-sized versions of health professionals eager to learn more about working in a hospital.

The Perioperative Professional Nurse Council hosted children and their relatives who work at Christiana Care — more than 330 people in all — for an open house Sept. 28. Perioperative nurses took the visitors on a behind-the-scenes tour of the OR and for a peek at the work of perioperative staff who care for patients undergoing surgery.

With games and hands-on activities like “operating” on pieces of fruit, learning to place a breathing tube in a mannequin and even taking a ride on an air-transfer mattress, “the kids had a great time learning about what goes on in the operating room,” said Perioperative Professional Nurse Council Chair Jessica Donnelly, RN, of Wilmington Hospital’s Post- Anesthesia Care Unit. While nursing school may be a decade or so away for many of the day’s visitors, Donnelly said: “I hope we planted a seed about what their parents do at work all day and the possibilities for their own futures.”