Area high school students gather for ‘Future Healthcare Heroes Camp’ at SKYCTC
Allen County High School foreign exchange students Angela Garcia Ortega from Spain (left) and Mia Guidi from Rome Italy (right) take part in analyzing a chemical compound in the Medical Lab Technician program at Southcentral Kentucky Community Colleges Future Health Care Hero Camp. The annual camp allows high school sophomores and freshmen to experience firsthand what a career in an Allied Health or Nursing program involves and to participate in hands-on activities in Nursing, Radiography, Respiratory Therapy, Surgical Technology, and Medical Laboratory Technology.
By Derek Parham – WBKO TV (March 6, 2024)
BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) - Area high school freshmen and sophomores gathered at SKYCTC for a two-day Future Healthcare Heroes Camp.
The camp allows those interested in healthcare careers hands-on experience in various professional fields.
Students rotated through seven intentionally focused labs that included nursing, radiography, respiratory therapy, surgical technology, medical lab technology, and fire science/EMT training. Included in each lab were opportunities for students to see firsthand some of the realities of each given profession and gain insight into the training necessary for careers in healthcare.
Focusing on high school students in their first two years, organizers of the camp hope that participants will get a head start on various dual credit courses and prerequisites for many of the classes offered at SKYCTC.
“We also thought, that’s the time in high school that they have to start deciding, ‘Which pathway am I going go? What dual-credit classes do I want to take?’ So, our whole purpose was to target that younger population so they could learn medical lab technician, respiratory therapy, surgical technology, and what those programs really entail,” explained Angie Harlan, Dean of Allied Health and Nursing at SKYCTC.
Leslie Elmore, a sophomore at Hart County High School, attended the camp last year and said that experience cemented her interest in a career as an ultrasound technician.
“There’s a radiology section, I feel like that really helps, and then all the hands-on activity you get to do here really shows you what you’ll be working with in the future,” Elmore said. “You get to go to the X-rays and you see different broken bones and stuff and different body parts, and they have a full body they put through the X-ray that you can see, it’s really cool.”
130 students from Barren County, Glasgow, Hart County, Warren East, and South Warren High Schools attended Wednesday’s camp. Two other high schools attended on Tuesday, and several more are invited to another iteration of the camp in May.
