By Dave O'Brien
Record-Courier staff writer
ROOTSTOWN " The students at the Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy seem to get younger every year.
This year, it was because they were younger. Rising ninth-graders, to be precise, from schools in 12 Northeastern Ohio counties participating in the annual Medcamp.
Now in its 19th year, the three-day Medcamp provides younger students interested in medicine and medical careers an inside look at the workings of the human body, including handling organs and seeing how disease and time can affect them.
Students are housed in the residence halls at Kent State University and transported to the Rootstown campus each day. There, they meet with medical school faculty and students, tour the laboratories and investigate their patient case studies.
Friday's events included students working on their own patient case studies in groups. From there, they must diagnose their "patient" with whatever maladies they may have and provide a prognosis.
Christopher Sheppard, professor of internal medicine and himself a NEOUCOM graduate, taught the students about bones, tendons and joints. Inflammation in the joints, he explained to one group of girls whose "patient" described ankle pain, can occur when there has been an injury to the cartilage between the bones and the body responds by sending white blood cells to clean up and repair the damage.
While one group explored diseased lungs and chest X-rays with NEOUCOM student Erik Lindstrom, three students handled hearts, exploring the atria and ventricles with their hands.
Raven Edwards, a student from Litchfield Middle School in Akron, had a different reaction than he expected to the experience.
"It's not like I thought it was going to be," he said, smiling and looking at the heart. "At first I thought I was going to throw up."
In another room, Laboratory Coordinator Cheryl Hodnichak showed the students how doctors take an electrocardiogram, or EKG, reading by attaching electrodes to their bodies. Two measurements, standing and prone, were then taken on each student showing the electrical activity in their bodies.
"They're getting a good introduction to medicine," said Jonathan Jackson, admissions specialist for the BS/MD program, as he watched students take in information during their anatomy lab session.
Eight students from Portage County participated this year. A grant from the Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation helped Medcamp accept 10 additional Summit County students, according to NEOUCOM.