in the lab Piggin’ Out Pork ribs help students learn proper surgical procedures

The guy standing next to Christi Denton at the counter gave her a look that was a bit shocked, a bit confused and maybe a bit frightened.

“I went to Main Street Meats, and I'm talking to the guy behind the counter,” says Denton, assistant professor in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing. “He said, ‘Are you looking for beef or pork ribs?’ and I said, ‘I don't know. I'm a vegetarian. What's more like human?’”

What the man standing next to her didn’t know is that Denton, who’s also coordinator of the adult gerontology acute care nurse practitioner program in the School of Nursing, needed pork ribs to teach students how to properly insert a tube between human ribs to drain fluid or air from the chest cavity. It’s a precarious procedure done in emergency situations when a chest tube is the only thing standing between life and death.

Denton is a critical care nurse who has worked night shifts for 17 years at Erlanger Hospital and an adult gerontology acute care nurse practitioner, herself. She has dealt with dozens of chest-tube emergencies. Pork ribs are the most similar to humans’ when it comes to the “feel” of inserting the tube, she says.

“It's the most realistic one that I think can mimic humans. There are a lot of sensations that students won't have until they do it,” Denton says.

During a recent lab in the School of Nursing, students worked on slabs of ribs attached to an artificial human torso, learning the “feel” of using a scalpel to cut through layers of skin, muscle and fat between ribs, then using their fingers to recognize that they’ve reached the chest cavity and are ready to insert the tube.

When the lesson began, the fake torso was inserted into a “patient” with a “medical misadventure,” Denton explains. After four students practiced their skills in different places on the ribs, the patient became a “multiple gunshot victim,” she told the students.

Artificial torsos with plastic skin and foam muscle cost several thousand dollars compared to about $2 to $4 per pound for a slab of pork spare ribs, Denton says. Artificial torsos aren’t as effective as the ribs for teaching students, she adds.

“When they simulate this with plastic-synthetic you don't get the same multilayer feel because on people you have a tough, membranous layer and you feel that ‘pop!’ to go through. Then you have to dissect out muscle,” Denton says. “All of that has a very different feel that they just can't replicate, but you certainly can on a piece of meat.”

A pig’s trachea—also available at meat stores— can be used for teaching students how to access the airway when going through the ribs won’t work. Intubation or using the trachea to open an airway to the lungs is required to keep a person breathing, Denton says.

Using pork products not only teaches students how it feels to insert a tube between human ribs or into the trachea, but this method also can take away some of the fear when dealing with a real medical emergency.

In these instances, Denton says, “it’s very nervewracking. Someone's very sick in front of you and the person is dying until you get this done. Simulation, especially with chest tubes or what we do on the pig trachea, gives the student some “real life” experience in a safe space. When they experience this in the hospital, they will have the skills needed to successfully support the patient’s most important function – breathing”. All thanks to pigs.

THIS PAGE: PIG RIBS ARE SIMILAR TO HUMANS’, SO STUDENTS IN THE ACUTE CARE NURSE PRACTITIONER LAB USE THEM TO LEARN HOW TO INSERT A CHEST TUBE.

Jennifer Isaacson’s 13-year-old daughter Emma has Down Syndrome, loves acting and “High School Musical.”

Isaacson’s 12-year-old son Josh is into robotics and plays trombone in the Signal Mountain Middle School band.

Her 8-year-old son Jake loves soccer and Pokemon. Five-year-old Lincoln just started kindergarten.

And Isaacson was enrolled in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing for the last five semesters and received a bachelor’s degree in nursing in December.

“There's no normal day,” she says with a laugh. She’ll stay busy after graduation. She has a fulltime job as a nurse in the cardiac intensive care unit lined up at Erlanger Hospital. The job relates back to her family.

“Emma required open-heart surgery when she was 1, and cardiac ICU nurses saved our lives and saved Emma’s. That's where I was introduced to cardiac and have loved it ever since,” says Isaacson, who graduated from Soddy Daisy High School in 2001.

Rachel Nall, clinical assistant professor in the UTC School of Nursing, describes Isaacson as “an example of motivation and perseverance.”

“Throughout her time in her nursing program, she has been focused on learning all that she can about the nursing profession and the opportunities nursing offers to people of all ages,” Nall says.

“She truly wants to be the best nurse she can be and care for patients.”

Jason Peter, Mary B. Jackson assistant professor in the School of Nursing, says Isaacson is “one of the most determined and motivated individuals I have come across in my nursing education career.”

“Patients and peers alike are overwhelmed by her fantastic capabilities and personality,” he says.

Isaacson attended Brigham Young University in

Provo, Utah, graduating with a bachelor's degree in audiology and speech pathology in 2005. At BYU, she met her Seattle-native husband, Jason.

In 2005, the couple moved to Knoxville for graduate work at the University of Tennessee. She earned a master’s degree in speech-language pathology, while Jason earned a law degree in 2007. He is now an attorney with Chattanooga law firm Spears, Moore, Rebman & Williams.

Getting the family up and out the door each weekday morning is a team effort, she says.

“We have a good system where I do food and backpacks, and he does clothes and shoes and hair,” she says. “Then we get them out and, yeah, it's just different depending on the day. We work together for medical appointments, for robotics club, for soccer clubs. We just go back and forth.”

For the last 10-plus years, she has worked fulltime as a licensed speech therapist, but her tightly packed schedule has forced her to cut back.

“I really loved it, and there's such a great need for the area, but now I'm more consulting and helping parents move in the right direction because, obviously, I have a big heart for families with special needs,” she says.

Isaacson hopes to return to UTC’s School of Nursing once she’s settled into her work in the Erlanger cardiac ICU. Her ultimate goal, she says, is to be a certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) in general surgery operating rooms.

“I love the complex thinking that comes along with CRNA. It's a lot of calculations and problem-solving and deep cognitive thinking,” Isaacson says.

Nall, faculty in the Nurse Anesthesia Program at UTC, has no doubt Isaacson will succeed.

“I'm proud of her for wanting to continue furthering her nursing education after she earns her BSN,” she says, “and I have no doubt whatever she dedicates herself to, she will accomplish.”

Jason Peter was 4 when he rode his first rollercoaster — Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Walt Disney World in Florida.

“I remember screaming, and I remember we had to go on it several times,” he recalls.

Several times because he wanted to ride it again and again.

The again-and-again love has never dimmed and, in fact, has become one of the bright lights in Peter’s life. At this point, 40 years after that first thrill, he has ridden 751 different rollercoasters, a number that includes rides in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, Mexico and Guatemala.

The Mary B. Jackson assistant professor in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing, Peter says his two sisters, nieces and nephews sometimes will meet him at theme parks for a rollercoaster ride or two, “but they're not my level.”

“I'm the only one that's a proclaimed rollercoaster enthusiast where I actually travel around,” says Peter, who’s also a family nurse practitioner and studying for a doctorate.

“I don't go primarily for the rollercoasters, but that's definitely something I plan the trips around. Mexico and Guatemala were strictly a rollercoaster trip, then other activities were planned around it.”

He hasn’t been on a coaster “in a while,” he says, but admits that a month is “a while” to him.

“I'll usually go to Six Flags over Georgia or Dollywood every couple of weeks,” he explains.

Whether a rollercoaster is top-notch depends on a series of factors, he says. Speed is one. Uniqueness of the ride another. What does it have that makes it stand out? Is it multiple inversions — upsidedown rollovers? Is it height? Do you plunge into tunnels then zoom back out?

Another consideration is “airtime,” a coaster enthusiast’s term for how long your body is lifted from the seat.

“I guess it’s all just the surprise of how the elements feel,” Peter says.

“The surprise of how they feel will really kind of get me laughing or giggling. The happiness, the freedom. Your hands up or whatever. To kind of have a release.”

His favorite rollercoasters are in Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Kings Dominion, both in Virginia; Busch Gardens Tampa in Florida; Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri, and Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

Although his 700-plus coaster rides might seem to make it impossible to choose his favorite, Peter comes up with one instantly: The Intimidator 305 at King’s Dominion just north of Richmond, Virginia.

It starts with a climb up 305-foot hill then plunges into a series of this-way-then-thatway curves that whip riders at 90-degree angles to the ground. At 90 mph, Intimidator is all over in a little more than one minute.

It’s so fierce, it has rules about who can ride. It prohibits those with: Recent surgery, heart trouble/high blood pressure, neck trouble, back trouble, pregnant and any physical conditions that may be aggravated by the ride.

After it was first built, Peter says, the ride had to modified because it changed direction so quickly, some riders were “graying out,” as in losing consciousness for a few seconds.

Like athletes, rollercoaster enthusiasts know that you need to drink a lot of fluids before riding, especially if it’s an especially rough ride, Peter says.

As for his bucket-list parks, his No. 1 is England’s Alton Park, which is surrounded by green landscapes and stone-built castles.

“It's just such a beautiful area,” he says, “and they cannot build anything higher than the tree line.”

To meet those building codes, the rollercoasters have tunnels and gullies cut into the ground, he says. Alton Park also has what some considered one of the best coasters in the world—The Smiler —which has 14 inversions and hits speeds up to 53 mph.