BB2C Focus Projects: High School Internships
Starting a high school internship program has been on the BB2C to-do list for several years. Marietta Memorial Hospital decided to get involved and developed an internship program for high school students that allows them to explore various departments within the Memorial Health System. The program allows for ten students (9 were chosen for year 1 of implementation) to complete rounds in 10 different hospital departments during a two-week period. After months of planning, applications were turned in from students and interviews took place during spring break. This week students are completing week two of the internship that they were quite excited to begin.
Student participants had the opportunity to meet people from the departments that they would visit during the internship orientation day. Sarah Oldaker and Alyson Johnson are Clinical Nurse Managers that students will be paired with for the experience. Sarah has been with Memorial for 12 years and has observed a lot of growth for the hospital stating the need for students to choose a medical pathway. Mandy Offenberger is a high school senior participant that saw the opportunity on Facebook. She is hoping to get a better look into the medical working environment, and to possibly get a head start if she chooses to continue on this path. Hunter Welch is another student participant who job shadowed in the medical field during her sophomore year. For her, simply researching the career did not give her a true picture of the work, and she would like to observe the interactions with patients. Hunter sees this as an opportunity to feel safer about her career choice once it is made.
Stacy Parks and the workforce development team at Memorial Health System developed this particular internship program to help meet the employment needs of the hospital and to help students get hands-on experience in various parts of the medical career field. There are many types of internships, i.e. short term, long term, project-based, supported, independent, etc. If you are interested in developing an internship experience for high school students, or if you already have an internship program developed please contact us. We would love to work with you to help area students connect to local employers.