Bradwell Institute put out the call and the Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield U.S. Army Medical Department Activity Ambassadors answered the call by teaching high school students human anatomy in the classroom for the day Dec. 5.

Human Anatomy teacher, Pamela Donald, wanted to give her students a different viewpoint on the subject garnered from real life experiences, versus just from a textbook. So, she put in a request to have speakers in the medical field come to her classroom to teach. Students had the opportunity to learn human anatomy from three different areas: parasites/autopsy, public health, and neuro-muscular topics.

"Having guest speakers from Winn Army is very important to our students," Donald explained, "because a lot of them have parents who are military or have been prior military."

One Ambassador, Diane Carlton, a nurse and health promotion coordinator at Winn Army Community Hospital, immediately jumped at the chance to teach these young people about Army public health nursing. Carlton said it is important to teach them how they can take better care of their bodies by making good choices. She said her reason for becoming an Ambassador is two-fold, one, to touch the community beyond the gates and two, to determine the needs of those beneficiaries whom they serve.

"We're going to gain more experience," Carlton said. "Also, so the next opportunity that we get to come out into the community surely we'll be more equipped, more empowered to know exactly what the needs are for the young people."

Nurses are an integral part of medicine and high school senior Shawn Martin's career goal is to become a emergency room nurse. He said his becoming a nurse would benefit not only himself, but his colleagues as well.

"Sometimes you have to lift people like physically," Martin said, "You actually need more male nurses for support."

Martin was a student in the public health class and said he was thinking about his grandmother during the Tobacco Cessation portion of the presentation. His grandmother was a smoker from the time she was a teenager until she was diagnosed with emphysema two years ago. Martin said he appreciated having the presenters come out to the school.

"It excites me more, because I'm learning more information ahead of time that will actually give me the reason to study actually what I want to do," Martin said.

Carlton agrees with Martin's assessment. She said the students will go beyond a classroom setting, and with the presentations they get to see what happens after graduation.

"We're giving them an example of nurses that are civilian nurses," Carlton said. "Nurses are Public Health Nurses, and active-duty, so it gives them a range of knowing that nursing is just not bedside nursing, it's more than that. You're teaching, you're out into the community, you're doing many things, so they're going to get a big open view and look at … 'Oh wow, when I get out of this classroom this is a possibility of what I could do as a career.'"

Maj. Beatriz Martinez, a nurse practitioner at Tuttle Army Health Clinic drove more than 50 miles to Hinesville to give her presentation.

"I think it helped me give them an understanding of yes, I'm in the medical field and I was teaching them a lesson about neural muscular systems, but how do we apply that," Martinez asked. "How do I apply that in my field as a nurse practitioner? Not only did I apply it in the hospital in a normal setting like here, but also kind of opened their focus and say 'you know what there's more out there.'"

This is the second time this quarter the Ambassadors had the chance to lend a helping hand to the students, teachers, faculty and staff at Bradwell. The presentations went so well, US Army MEDDAC Ambassadors have been asked to come back to the school during the spring semester to instruct a new group of students.