Vaccine here, vaccine there, vaccine everywhere! On April 22, Seward County Community College nursing students helped administer Covid vaccine shots at the old Walmart Neighbor Market building. They’ve been helping with the vaccination clinics throughout the semester.  

Some students talked about how Covid has changed their learning experience.

Briseyda Lopez, nursing student from Liberal, explains that they have “had to cancel a few clinics and are very limited on where [they] can go because some facilities require [them] to be tested twice in a week for Covid.”

The student nurses log hours working and observing in hospitals and other settings where medical professionals might be needed. Each situation is vastly different.

“At the hospital, we [normally] have one-on-one with the patients, giving them medication, starting their IV’s,” says Brayan Oropeza, nursing student from Liberal. “While here … we administer [the shot] and we watch them in case they have any adverse conditions.”

The students also share that they are grateful for the new experience.

“It is a unique opportunity for us nursing students … because most nurses that have come before have not had this opportunity,” Esi Houtz, nursing student from Elkart, says.

Lopez adds to Houtz statement, “Us having the opportunity to administer injections says a lot because [we are] nursing students. We learned a lot.”

Houtz, on the historical significance of the vaccine, says “To have [a vaccine] within a year of having a pandemic [is great] because if you look back to the 1900s when they were developing the polio vaccine, it took quite a few years.”

Lopez says she is “over with this pandemic.”

Oropeza shares the same sentiment, “We want everything to go back to normal. We want people to go out with their friends.”

“We want to get the pandemic over with so we can get … back to all the excitement we use to know in 2019,”  agrees Houtz.

Also contributing to this story were Mary Ramirez and Destiny Vasquez.