MORGANTOWN – “Betty” froze the kid in her tracks.
“Whoa!” the Mountaineer Middle School student said after recovering. “When you’re walking up, she really looks real.”
Crist Mentzer smiled. That’s because “Betty” is as real as she needs to be.
Mentzer is a paramedic and community educator with Monongalia County Emergency Medical Services.
And the aforementioned “Betty,” medical mannequin depicting an elderly woman – in a very life-like way, as the one student discovered – was the star of the Mon EMS booth at the Hawk Career Fair at University High School.
More than 2,000 students browsed the fair, which was also open to Mountaineer Middle and Westwood Middle, the two feeder schools for UHS.
“The idea was to get as many through the door as we could,” said Jesse Mehle, a University High counselor who helped organize the event.
“We wanted our UHS students to start thinking about careers if they haven’t already,” he said.
“That’s the same for Mountaineer Middle and Westwood Middle kids,” the counselor continued.
“Plus, today gets them familiarized with the building, for when they come here as students. This place can be a little intimidating.”
Besides Mon EMS, some 90 other tables and booths filled the gym for the day.
Call it a bevy of business from the University City: taking in everything from high-tech, the trades, restaurants, retail and the medical community – a segment of which Morgantown is truly known.
Eden Nease, Averie McReynolds and Taylor Casto, who are classmates and friends at Mountaineer Middle are all thinking about the medical field, in fact.
Averie wants to be a pediatrician. Taylor is considering a future life as a surgeon.
And Eden might train as a physical therapist – if she doesn’t become a small business owner first. “Maybe I’ll do both,” she mused.
“Betty” already has her career. She’s in the medical worst-case scenario profession.
She can present with serious trauma – say, a skull fracture – from a tumble down the stairs.
There’s that and any number of emergency room maladies. At the Hawk Career Fair, her heart was misbehaving.
“We’ve got her in cardiac arrest right now,” Mentzer said. “She’s not having a good day.”
She’s good with the once-and-future paramedics for training though, he said. She not only looks real – she “feels” real – in a tactile way.
“She isn’t hard plastic,” he said.
“And that’s actually important for when trainees start working with real patients – when you’re looking for a pulse, doing chest compressions, things like that.”
With a little bit of help from him, she tossed up her hand as one group of students were exiting for the day. Call that one a modified Royal wave, sort of.
“‘Bye, Betty,” a student said, waving back.
