On Tuesday, the job shadowing class went to UT Health and had Dr. Mickey Slimp explain to them how technology enhances medical care through patient education. The class goes to different health care job environments to learn and gain real world experience by having different therapists, doctors, nurses, and sciences talk to them about what they do and how they do it.
“This is an overall really great opportunity for the students which is going to give them a lot of exposure to jobs that they are interested in,” job shadowing teacher Sally Clemons said. “They different healthcare professions we see help explain their jobs to the students and lets that students see what they are interested in.”
The job shadowing class is a branch class of the health science department where every Tuesday and Thursday students head to the UT Health and Science center and learn about different health related topics. The students are guided by a person who works in a job relating to health care and that person talks and explains new topics each time they visit.
“I heard about the program through UT Health hospital last year and was interested in it,” Clemmons said. “We had a meeting with [Brent] Berryman, who is the CTE director here at the high school, [and] met with the representative from their health hospital and went over the details and came to an agreement which would split up the different teaching settings.”
During the first semester students go to a classroom and have different healthcare specialists at the research hospital come and speak to the students about their careers and other real world experiences. In the second semester, they will be shadowing those specialists on the job throughout the hospital gaining real world experience.
“Our health science department wants to give our students the best experience they can,” Berryman said. “To do that we feel like they need to go out to the hospitals and the workplace were health science professions are located so that they can learn directly from them and see what really goes on.”
The students go to the new community and rural health building each week which has higher standards as far as technology and increases the experiences that the students could have. This gives the students a good look at what a career in health care looks like today.
“Being able to go to the hospitals and just see what the doctors and nurses do on a daily basis is a fun and exciting experience for me to have,” senior Brooke Noble said. “I think this will help me know what I really want to do in my life whether I want to be in a clinical setting or a hospital setting and I think it can show me what field of nursing I want to be in.”
The student also get badges they have to wear, as well as lab coats. UT health professionals help students in building their resume, college applications, and letter of recommendation.
“Being in a hospital setting just automatically sets your behavior and the way you look at things and raises them up a notch,” Clemmons said. “This allows the students to really see what is going on in the jobs that they are really interested in.”
