Students Try On Medical Careers at NARH
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| Whitney Cole and Katelyn Parmenter pose outside the MRI area. |
"It was nice ... It wasn't as bad as a I thought it would be," she said Friday of the magnetic resonance imaging machine.
The 17-year-old wasn't sick - she was just getting a patient's eye view of what it felt like to lie on the table.
The Drury High junior was one of eight high school students spending the day at NARH as part of the local Job Shadow program. Normally held on Groundhog Day, Feb. 1, it was delayed this year because of a snowstorm.
That's turned February into "Job Shadow Month," said Michele Boyer-Vivori, an employment specialist at Drury High School, to fit in the 71 students in all four grades who signed up to job shadow this year.
<L2>This is only the second year the hospital has participated. "We have double the number of students we had last year," said Lorraine Mancuso, the hospital's director of education.
The hospital had eight students shadowing in medical imaging, medical/surgical, maternity and rehabilitation; the students got to chose which department they were interested in.
The four girls in medical imaging were clear that they were interested in a career in the medical field.
"I asked to go here," said freshamn Kayla Brown-Wood, 14, of Drury High School. "I've always been interested in medicine. But I'm not sure exactly what I want to do."
For Katelyn Parmenter, 16, the choice was obvious choice.
"I want to go into the medical field and I'm interested in radiology," said the Hoosac Valley High School junior. "I've had a lot of X-rays from figure skating."
A member of the Christmas Brook Figure Skating Club and a Bay State Games competitor, she's taken a few tumbles in her time.
Job Shadow Day is a nationwide initiative to provide youth with glimpses into possible career paths through spending time with professionals. While the students aren't allowed to use any of the equipment, or interact with patients without the patients' permission, they were able to speak to doctors and technicians and observe the different aspects of their work.<R3>
"We got to watch them take X-rays," said Whitney Cole, 17, of Hoosac Valley. "The doctors told us what they were looking for. If it wasn't right, they had to take another picture.
"I liked that they had a variety of people. It was unexpected what kind of patient was going to come and what they were to have to X-ray," the junior continued.
The program is popular with students of all achievement levels and can lead to further steps along a career path, said Boyer-Vivori.
For example, a student who job shadowed in medical imaging last year is interning in the department this year and plans to take the radiology technician course at Southern Vermont College in Bennington after graduating.
"He feels he's got an advantage before going to school because of being here," she said. "It's wonderful the hospital has opened itself up to the program."
Drury has 27 interns (juniors and seniors) spread throughout the community in various positions. Participation in the program can lead to job offers after high school, said Boyer-Vivori, as well as possible college credit.
Mancuso said the hospital had worked through the Berkshire Chamber of Commerce to set up the Job Shadow program. Last year's students gave the program a positive review, leading to
<L4>The hospital is used to having students in nursing and radiology - one from SVC, Pamela Pelchat, was in the MRI room. But only in the past two years have high school students become part of the mix.
Health care is one of the fastest-growing occupational fields in the nation; it is expected to generate some 3 million new jobs over the next eight years, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
While there's plenty of job opportunities in the field, one of the students in the Job Shadow program had a much more personal reason for choosing nursing.
Seventeen-year-old Justine Barbeau will graduate from Drury this year. She's already applied to the McCann Technical School licensed practical nursing program and was getting some mentoring from Gladys Conklin, an LPN on the third floor.
Barbeau explained how she watched Conklin give out medications, take blood pressures and other care. She posed for a few photographs. But as the reporters walked away, Conklin called out that her shadow had something more to say.
It was about why she wanted to be nurse - not because of job growth, not because of earning power. But because illness had given her perhaps greater empathy with the sick who need her care.
"The reason I want to be a nurse is because I was diagnosed with MS in my freshman year," she said. "It's really made me want to help others."
