As flu season begins, the free flu shot clinic made flu shots more accessible to students and was also a learning opportunity for many of TCU’s nursing students.

This clinic in the TCU Recreation Center was open to students, faculty and staff on campus by the TCU Harris College of Nursing.

On the side closest to the entrance of the basketball court, two students studying to be nurse practitioners were giving CPR training sessions to attendees. The two students chose to focus on CPR for their doctoral projects.

“Out of the millions of people who have sudden cardiac arrest every year, only 39.2% of the population actually do something about it,” Kenda Chaker, one of the practitioner students, said. “That’s a very low percentage so we wanted to encourage people to learn how to do CPR and show them it isn’t hard.”

According to the nursing students, many people have reservations because of the need to sometimes hurt the person when giving CPR as well as having to give mouth-to-mouth CPR.

“This particular technique that we’re teaching people eliminates mouth-to-mouth and even if you hurt them a little bit, they will be helped overall, which is the primary goal,” Chaker said.

The flu shots were administered in the basketball court next to the CPR training sessions.

“We wanted to pair up our seniors with two nursing students at each table and their job is to mentor and supervise the two students who are learning,” Sharon Canclini, an assistant professor of professional practice in the nursing school, said.

After a nursing student gave a flu shot, the seniors were instructed to give them feedback so that they didn’t interrupt them while the shot was happening.

“We wanted this event to really run like a well-oiled machine,” Canclini said.

On a different court, nurses were in the priming station, a medication room where nursing students prime the syringes used for the shots.

In the corner of the priming station, there were a number of laptops set up for the nursing students.

“Before the students give the shots, they have to watch a training video instructing students how to give injections, so we have that as a resource for students who need it,” Canclini said.

After doing flu shot clinics for 18 years, Harris College has been able to improve the way that the clinic functions after undergoing the harsh conditions of the pandemic. The chairs were set up to where the nursing students are breathing in one direction while the patients are breathing in another to prevent the transmission of the virus.

“We took the good things that we learned from COVID-19 and kept them, like the speed and efficiency,” Canclini said. “Also, if you look, the supplies used for the injections are very low-tech and designed to be cheap so that we can take this anywhere in the community and people can afford it.”