DATE: Tuesday, March 25, 1997               TAG: 9703250269

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY REBECCA MYERS CUTCHINS, STAFF WRITER

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:   98 lines

MENTORED TEENS MAKE THE ROUNDS

Brady Lane Newsome was barely 18 hours old when 12-year-old Heather Clingenpeel placed a stethoscope on his soft, pink skin.

``Listen here, here and here,'' Dr. David Connor told Heather, pointing to various spots on the baby's chest. ``Do you hear his heart beating?''

Heather nodded.

The doctor rolled the baby over and placed his stethoscope on the baby's back. Heather used her stethoscope to do the same.

``Now let's check his spine,'' Connor said.

Before leaving the nursery, Heather removed her blue hospital smock and put on her white lab coat. With Connor by her side, the pair headed toward the pediatrics ward on the floor below.

Heather, a seventh-grader from Cradock Middle School, was following the doctor on his rounds through Maryview Medical Center as part of a mentoring program called ``Adolescents in Medicine.''

The program, a partnership between the school and Portsmouth Family Medicine, pairs six seventh-graders with six second-year residents for two consecutive school years.

The goals are to train residents to deal with adolescents and train pre-teens to serve as counselors for family and friends, said Viki Lorraine, an assistant professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School who started the program in September. It is being administered as part of a federal grant.

Heather, who aspires to be a pediatrician, said she likes the program because ``you get a head start on your career.''

Heather participates in the program along with five other Cradock Middle School seventh-graders: Tazashia Burns, Glenn Arpin, Felicia Seamster and Billy McDuffie, all 12, and Jarell Johnson, 13.

At the beginning of the year, the students were given white lab coats with name tags identifying them as medical trainees. They also were provided with stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs.

``I think it's a good opportunity for us to learn about medicine, especially considering I want to be a doctor when I grow up,'' said Tazashia, who, like Heather, wants to be a pediatrician.

Tazashia's favorite part of the program, she said, is ``seeing the doctors in action.'' The students meet their mentors once a month, usually at Portsmouth Family Medicine, but sometimes at the hospital, in nursing homes, or on home visits.

``I go around with Dr. (David) Cyr and watch him with his patients, and sometimes I take their blood pressures or weigh them or listen to their hearts,'' Tazashia said.

Heather's mentor, Connor, says he thinks the shadowing experience at hospitals is more meaningful for the students than it is at doctors' offices.

``They see more pathology, they understand what a murmur is, they can compare what a lung with pneumonia sounds like versus what one with asthma sounds like,'' he said. ``So they learn a lot more this way than they do in the office.''

Each month, the residents also make visits to the school to teach lessons ranging from the significance of blood pressure and the role it plays in cardiovascular health to the effects of obesity on the heart.

This month's topic, taught by Connor, was on genograms, a lesson Jarell already had been introduced to by his mentor, Dr. Seelan Newton.

``A genogram is like a family tree that tells about diseases in the family, like diabetes and high blood pressure,'' Jarell explained to the group, which recently met after school in a science classroom of Cradock Middle School.

``Can anybody tell me why it would be important for me to have a genogram on a patient that I first see today?'' Connor asked.

``Because you might not know exactly what's wrong with him, but if you do a family history, it might make it a little easier,'' said Billy, who is paired with second-year resident Dr. Carl Flor.

Other lessons being taught this year include the role that cholesterol, diet and family history play in heart disease and how exercise, stress, alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs affect one's health.

``I've learned it's pretty interesting to be a doctor,'' said Glenn , whose mentor is Dr. Jonathan Bromberg and who hopes to one day study paleontology, the study of prehistoric life forms.

It's pretty interesting for the doctors, too.

``I've worked with kids for many years, but a lot of doctors haven't, so this gives them an idea of how to interact with teenagers,'' said Connor, a former counselor who also has coached children in sports.

Next year, the students will continue the program, with emphasis on developing skills to become effective peer counselors.

They will learn about substance abuse, school problems, depression, suicide, eating disorders and conflict resolution. Six new seventh-graders will be brought into the program at the beginning of next school year.

``We'll have a total of 12 running through here next year,'' Lorraine said. ``Next year, the kids will still be spending time in the hospitals and nursing homes, but we may even have them doing some more community-based work.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos by MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot

Dr. David Connor listens to Brady Lane Newsome's chest as he teaches

Heather Clingenpeel in a mentoring program between Maryview Medical

Center and Cradock Middle School.

Heather Clingenpeel uses a stethoscope to listen to the respiratory

sounds of asthma patient Laura V. Person. Clingenpeel is one of six

seventh-graders participating in a mentoring program with

second-year residents at Maryview Medical Center in Portsmouth. KEYWORDS: MENTORING PROGRAM PORTSMOUTH SCHOOLS

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