Med Center Health welcomes more than 30 teen ambassadors for the summer

BOWLING GREEN, Ky.- Teens across the area are preparing for their future by getting a feel for different medical careers they may want to pursue.

Every summer, Med Center Health welcomes students to be teen ambassadors at the hospital so they can gain valuable experience that will expose them to careers in the healthcare profession.

More than 30 high school students are volunteering at Med Center Health Bowling Green’s campus this summer to get a feel of the different departments and shadow healthcare professionals.

Executive director of the Med Center Health Foundation, Amy Hardin, says, “On any given day, when you enter the doors of Med Center Health, it takes up to 80 different people who have made it possible for you to have a walk into a clean facility to walk into, a clean sanitized room, that has been turned over from the last patient from nurses to surgical techs, and we just want to expose future healthcare leaders to all of those opportunities.”

Fifty students applied, but only 33 were accepted for the program, two of which completed the program last summer, making them program assistants this year.

Hannah Claire Cassady, program assistant for the Teen Ambassador Program, says, “With doing this just one year, it has really opened my eyes on healthcare in general and all of the things that come in the doors here.”

The students are split into groups and rotate to different departments each day to learn what it takes to operate a healthcare facility.

Cassady adds, “All the friendships that I have made along the way and getting to collaborate with so many wonderful healthcare professionals and learning so much about what it takes to be a good healthcare professional and care for people who need our help as best as possible.”

This program helps students become familiar with the wide range of jobs at the Medical Center and it also helps them decide what they will study in the future.

Hardin says, “The nurses, the staff, the unit clerks, the physicians, they all see that these students are eager to learn, they want to be here, and they are very hands-on. So, we love that we get wonderful feedback from the departments as well because again it shows that we’ve chosen the right students to be here.”

The Med Center Health Bowling Green campus started the Teen Ambassador Program in 2022 and hopes to expand the program to other Med Center Health locations in the future.

The students became teen ambassadors just last week and will continue their work until the middle of July, when they will receive a certificate of completion from the program and a letter stating all volunteer hours completed.