Budding healthcare professionals — along with those who are more seasoned — looking to pitch a tent in the world of pediatrics have a somewhat unorthodox way to gain invaluable experience. They can go to camp.
Summer camps for special needs children provide staff nurses and volunteers the opportunity to dig deep with patients facing a variety of issues. Not only does it prove to be a great way to have hands-on experience with a wide range of conditions, but working at a special needs camp requires more in-depth caregiver and patient interaction.
While taking a hike along the summer camp landscape, we found three distinct camps for kids with special needs. We sat around the virtual campfire with organizers from each camp to learn more about healthcare opportunities in the great outdoors.
CAMP KUDZU
What is it? This 16-year-old non-profit camp dedicates itself to campers ages 5 to 18 with type 1 diabetes. Its three overnight sessions take place annually, with two sessions at Camp Twin Lakes in Rutledge and one at Camp Barney Medintz in Cleveland. What began with less than 100 campers in 2000 has grown to more than 650 in 2015.
Fun meets education: Seth Tuttle, the camp’s director of development, describes Camp Kudzu as a combination of typical summer camp revelry with practical diabetes education. Kids make a splash with swimming, hiking, farming, archery, arts and crafts, and more.
Simultaneously, they’re learning the skills and importance of staying on top of their condition.
“The education side comes into play when we help kids focus on checking their sugars and testing themselves with a glucose monitor,” Tuttle said. “We explain to them why they should check themselves before activities and before meals.”
Frontline staff: The clinical staff helps keep tabs on campers in a variety of ways, including nighttime glucose checks.
“The outcomes are reported the next day to campers to let them know how their body is doing at night. Campers meet with their clinicians four times a day and work through each camper’s individual insulin-to-carbohydrate ratios and insulin sensitivity factors,” Tuttle said. “We explain what those readings mean and how the information they contain can be used to create healthier outcomes.”
Staff opportunities: For every nine campers, Camp Kudzu has three counselors. In addition to the three counselors, each cabin has a clinician, either a nurse or other licensed health care provider.
“It’s a great opportunity for nurses,” Tuttle explained. “They get indoctrinated very quickly with working with a kid with a chronic illness.”
Most rewarding: Tuttle says that from a staff point of view, Camp Kudzu is in the business of providing opportunities for campers to lead a normal life.
“We provide normalcy, and there’s nothing more rewarding than providing an environment where everyone knows your name and disease,” he said. “We try to create an environment where kids learn from each other. It’s transformative.”
BLAZE SPORTS CAMP
What is it?: Tucked away on 74 acres of the heavily wooded Camp Dream in Warm Springs, Blaze Sports Camp serves ages 7 to 17 with a variety of physical disabilities. This includes children with cerebral palsy, spina bifida, acquired brain injury, amputation, spinal cord injury, visual impairment, blindness, muscular dystrophy or other related disabilities.
The sporting life: The camp’s mission is to give children the opportunity to experience sports, some for the very first time. This includes rock climbing, wheelchair basketball, tennis, track and field, archery, swimming, kayaking and all points in between.
“The goal is to foster leadership, social skills and independence,” said camp director Gillian Sharp. “We really work on getting them to do things for themselves.”
Staff opportunities: The camp has a staff camp nurse position they fill each year with a nursing professional available to come in for the full week. This person provides campers with all of the required medical aid, including the administration of medications.
While Sharp says a lot of former campers return as counselors, camp counselor positions remain popular among college students majoring in nursing, sports therapy or adaptive sports.
Big returns: According to Sharp, nurses and students working at Blaze Sports Camp can reap huge benefits.
“Some of our nurses in the past have said they just love building relationships with campers and seeing them thrive in that environment,” she said. “The nurses get a real wide experience with all of the different disabilities in one place. It’s something not a lot of nurses get to see. It’s really good experience for them.”
Most rewarding: For her, Sharp says watching campers change and transition in a short period of time continues to be the most rewarding aspect of working at Blaze.
“A lot of these kids are quite isolated in their home environment, because they might be the only one in their school or community with a physical disability,” Sharp said. “For them to come to camp and see all the things they can do and all of the things kids with a similar disability can do, it really helps them. It’s just amazing. Their independence, confidence and social skills change really quickly.”
AIREE EXPERIENCES
What is it?: These week long camps take children with neurobiological disorders —primarily those with autism, ADHD and other learning disabilities— on outdoor adventures. This includes exploring a deserted island in coastal Georgia; working as cattle ranch hands in Tennessee; paddling along the Chattooga River on the Georgia/South Carolina border; and hiking with llamas in North Carolina.
Group effort: Owner and camp director Matthew Weneta says the camp works with a wide range of healthcare professionals. They have a consulting physician on staff, and also collaborate with physical therapists, occupational therapists and speech and language pathologists.
Interaction: According to Weneta, volunteers and staff are given a unique form of interaction with campers. It’s a crash course in communication, as many of the campers struggle with sensory issues. Some may have a higher pain threshold and be oblivious to such things as blisters. Others face anxiety with a fight-or-flight response much quicker than average children.
“With our kids, it’s much more about relating to them and meeting the kids where they are so you can do the work,” he said. “It’s more about bedside manner with this population. That’s a more important focus or skill. There’s a bit more depth to the relationship to be effective with these kids.”
On-the-job benefits: From a training perspective, Weneta says his staff acquires a better understanding of the emotional and relational needs of special needs children. And they also walk away with more tools for connecting with children in general.
“You really get a broader understanding of how to approach and develop a relationship with this type of population so that you can do the hard skill work that you’re trained in,” Weneta said.
Most rewarding: Putting these types of children in exciting yet challenging situations provides great rewards, Weneta says.
“With high adventure, kids have things put in front of them that appear to be huge, difficult and scary,” he explained, “but they’re able to navigate them happily and have fun so that they go home with a sense of confidence and competence driving towards independence and social interaction.”
Q&A WITH DIANE HARRIS
Each June, Maya Kahn, the 14-year-old daughter of Atlanta-based CDC scientist Diane Harris and husband Danny Kahn, hops a plane to Lake Hughes, Calif. for a week at The Painted Turtle. This camp for children with special needs dedicates one week each year to those with skeletal dysplasia. Her mom says Maya, who was born with anchondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism, counts down the days to another camp experience.
“The biggest thing about the camp is Maya sees she’s not the only one dealing with this,” Harris said. “The kids are all in the same boat. For an entire week, it’s just a given they’re not going to be challenged by their height.”
In addition to all of the activities being catered to those of short stature, Harris laughs and says the food remains one of the bigger draws for her daughter. Unlike the food at other camps, the cuisine at the Turtle gets high marks from Maya. The late actor Paul Newman helped create The Painted Turtle, so the facility uses Newman’s Own food products and locally grown produce to create meals.
“It’s just tons of fun for Maya,” Harris said. “She’s been there enough years so she knows what the week looks like. When she was packing, she said she needed certain clothes for the Silly Olympics. And there’s Crazy Hair Day, so she needed to pack certain hair products. It’s so exciting for her.”
On what her daughter gets out of Painted Turtle:
“For Maya, Painted Turtle is her happy place. Throughout the school year, she struggles with acceptance. Going to camp is that one week a year that’s she’s with all of the other kids who understand what it’s like being her. For once, all of her peers are essentially the same height, they all understand the experiences they all go through living in a world that’s taller than they. It’s kind of a relief for her that week when she finally gets to be with kids who don’t ask questions. She doesn’t need to explain anything.”
On the staff:
“The counselors are all great. They have a pretty low camper to counselor ratio. The counselors are all carefully chosen, really enthusiastic and sweet people. Maya comes home talking about one counselor or another that she bonded with during the week and has great stories about what they shared. She always comes back saying it’s one of the best weeks of her life.”
On the comfort she gets as a parent:
“Painted Turtle has an amazing medical staff. Well Shell, where kids go for medical help if they need it, is a full-fledged clinic. They can do dialysis. They have nurses on staff and a doctor on call 24 hours. Not that our kids with skeletal dysplasia are that medically needy, but their needs will be covered if there’s any kind of medical emergency.”
