Med Center Health Teen Ambassador Program gives students a firsthand look at healthcare careers
BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — While many students spend their summer break relaxing, 25 teenagers from across south-central Kentucky are spending theirs inside Med Center Health, exploring what a future career in healthcare could look like.
The hospital’s five-week Teen Ambassador Program gives students ages 14 to 17 the opportunity to volunteer while rotating through a variety of hospital departments, gaining firsthand exposure to careers in healthcare.
Students are selected through a competitive application process that includes essays, letters of recommendation and interviews. Hospital leaders say the experience helps students make informed decisions about their future while developing professional skills along the way.
“They’re just gaining experience within healthcare to see what they might want to do as they get older and start to choose careers,” said Breona Shanklin, director of volunteer services at Med Center Health. “This just gives everybody a great feel for what they may like and what they might dislike, and an appreciation for healthcare workers as a whole.”
Throughout the program, students spend two days a week rotating through departments including the emergency room, mother-baby, neonatal intensive care, pediatric rehabilitation, environmental services and nutrition. During one recent rotation, students toured the hospital’s microbiology laboratory, where they observed specialists testing specimens for infectious diseases.
Although students do not provide direct patient care, they observe healthcare professionals, ask questions and learn how each department contributes to patient care.
Shanklin said one of the program’s biggest goals is helping students understand that hospitals rely on much more than doctors and nurses.
“Of course there’s clinical and there’s healthcare workers, but there’s also a whole different side of Med Center Health that we all work under this one umbrella,” Shanklin said. “We have marketing, finance, accounting, human resources and so many different avenues.”
For Warren Central High School senior Kaleigh Andrews, the experience has reinforced her interest in healthcare while also introducing her to career paths she hadn’t previously considered.
“This opportunity has really shown me that even if I don’t want to be an optometrist, there are so many backup options and so many things that I also like,” Andrews said. “Especially respiratory therapy. I’ve been really interested in that.”
Andrews said seeing hospital departments up close has been much different than simply hearing about them in a classroom.
“When we got here, we got to go around the hospital and explore different departments, and I thought that was really cool,” she said.
Shanklin said she has watched students become more confident as the program progresses, growing more comfortable asking questions and interacting with healthcare professionals. She hopes they leave with not only a better understanding of healthcare careers but also an appreciation for every employee who helps a hospital operate.
“It takes a team to run this hospital successfully,” Shanklin said.
Hospital leaders say several former Teen Ambassadors have gone on to pursue healthcare careers, with some eventually returning to work at Med Center Health.
