Waynesburg University senior nursing students are hosting campus wellness activities throughout February and until the beginning of March for their Clinical Prevention and Population Health for the community nursing course. The goal of hosting the activities is for the students to engage in educational sessions with other students on campus.

The topics of the activities are presented by the nursing students to their clinical instructors. Topics include heart health, date rape, healthy relationships and more. Every semester, tables are set up in Stewart, Stover and Eberly Library for students who are passing by to gain information on these important topics.  

The nursing department meets with health services to go through which topics are important to talk to students about and where the need is. .

“We kind of have a guideline and [the students] work with their instructors to say is this a good topic. [The students] come up with the contents, handouts or printouts,” Jennifer Dean, nurse director of student health services, said.

The tables will have goodies that correlate to the topics for students to pick up after stopping to learn from the nursing majors. Tables may have heart shaped candies for the topic of heart health, or more serious objects like drink testers for the topic of date rape.

After filling out a questionnaire, students will be entered to win a kayak, which plays along with this year’s theme of Riding the Wave of Wellness.

On Feb. 10, senior nursing students hosted the date rape and heart health tables in Stewart and Stover.

“We decided to do heart health because one: it’s Feb., so it’s heart month. I personally have a love for heart health because heart disease runs in my family, Courtney Hill, senior nursing major, said.

“Doing research and learning about it is not only beneficial to me but also the people around me because you don’t understand that the things you do at a young age have a huge affect on you when you get older.” Hill and Lois Ballog, the students manning the heart health table, taught other students what can cause heart problems later in life and how to prevent them from occurring. 

A table on date rape drugs was also set up to teach students the importance of being proactive in knowing the warning signs of when a drink might be drugged, and how to prevent it from happening. Rebecca Fremd and Hannah Cumberledge were working the table.

“I feel like it’s an important topic to bring up because a lot of people are like hush-hush about it. There’s not a lot of talk about it, and there’s stigma around it,” Cumberledge said. “You just have to be self-aware about the things around you and make sure you’re not leaving you drink unattended and not accepting drink from people you don’t know.”

The next few weeks , the senior nursing students will be hosting these activity tables to continue to educate the Waynesburg University students. The future tables include topics on sleep on Feb. 20, self-care and stress on Feb. 24 and many more topics that are relevant to the student population.

Traditionally, the university has held a Health Fair that held screenings and blood donations, but this year it is being switched to a Wellness Day on Mar.  26 that focuses more on personal wellness.

“We felt like attendance was going down in the last couple of years, so we thought we’d change it up a little bit and maybe just focus on wellness versus the screenings,” Dean said. “We’ll focus on things that we think students need a little help on like sleep, exercise and nutrition.”