COVID-19
My 5-year-old daughter got home one day and told me that her school would be holding a Career day where parents would come and talk about their profession. As she looked up at me and asked me to participate, I could not say no to her beaming brown eyes.
So here I was, trying to figure out how I could explain my (let’s face it) not so simple job - managing healthcare training products - to a kindergarten class. And then, it hit me: CAE Juno is our most simple product, designed for portability and simplicity, specifically for a nursing school setting. I figured I would need 20 minutes for set-up and tear-down – so the whole thing would not take more than an hour. Perfect!
CAE Juno’s popularity has grown tremendously in the last year, and I cannot count the number of in-house demos I have done of this amazing product. I have been presenting to doctors, nurses, hospital deans, CEOs, and professionals of all sorts, but for some reason, this presentation was making me more nervous than any other. Being a dad, I’m very comfortable speaking with my own children, but this was different: I had to entertain about 20 kids for 40 minutes! What was I going to say and do?
So I did what I thought would be most interesting thing for kids – act as if the simulator was a real patient. I bought toothbrushes, some gauze and eye drops, brought along my stethoscope and bag mask. Still, would that be entertaining enough?
As I got to the school at 9 a.m. and was getting CAE Juno prepared for her show, we were drawing much attention from all the school personnel. The curiosity was at a maximum!
I put on a white lab coat and as the kids were walking towards us to greet us.
I made the mannequin cough.
“What do you think is wrong with her?”, I asked.
All the kids raised their hands – “She is sick!”
“That’s right”, I answered.
For the next 35 minutes, we brushed her teeth and took her pulse, we gave her eye drops and bandaged her wounds. She was well taken care of.
As I was asking them questions about pulses and bodily functions, one of the children told me about his mom, who was given the wrong medicine and had to be treated for this medical error. It was then my opportunity to tell the kids about our noble mission: to improve patients’ health and help avoid these kinds of mistakes through training and knowledge.
Finally, I opened the simulator’s chest to show the kids how CAE Juno was made, and I was surprised to see that they were really interested by how she worked and how she was wired. They asked to come up one by one to take a closer look.
I finished by telling them what being an engineer is all about and that they need to go to school to learn a lot of really interesting things.
Maybe one day, one of these children will dream about joining CAE… Maybe I was able to light a small spark and contribute to our future workforce! Who knows?
Each child left the class, some of them waving goodbye, some of them giving me a hug. I left the class an hour later, CAE Juno back in the truck, feeling so much happiness.
It was amazing. Truly, there are thousands of CAE stories and this is one of them.
