My hospital has a nice summer program for 3rd year BSN students to introduce them to nursing. The big oversight, IMO, is we do nothing in this area to introduce nursing to high school students as a possible career. To me, when these kids are looking at colleges, they often select colleges based on possible majors. Equally important to court are the students who are deciding whether to go to a college which offer a nursing program, not just those who are almost finished with their BSN. Two of my own kids have recently taken two different national-based "interest surveys" at middle and high school, and do you know that nursing is not even LISTED as an option for a career? They have all these jobs like "shoe repair" and such, but not nursing. They do have Nurse Practitioner and Nurse Anesthesist, but not RN (or LPN). Well, gee, wonder why no one is going to college to be a nurse? I'd like to see my hospital have some sort of shadowing program for anyone interested in finding out what a nurse does. Please share what your community or hospital does to introduce high school students to the field of nursing.
My hospital has a nice summer program for 3rd year BSN students to introduce them to nursing. The big oversight, IMO, is we do nothing in this area to introduce nursing to high school students as a possible career. To me, when these kids are looking at colleges, they often select colleges based on possible majors. Equally important to court are the students who are deciding whether to go to a college which offer a nursing program, not just those who are almost finished with their BSN. Two of my own kids have recently taken two different national-based "interest surveys" at middle and high school, and do you know that nursing is not even LISTED as an option for a career? They have all these jobs like "shoe repair" and such, but not nursing. They do have Nurse Practitioner and Nurse Anesthesist, but not RN (or LPN). Well, gee, wonder why no one is going to college to be a nurse? I'd like to see my hospital have some sort of shadowing program for anyone interested in finding out what a nurse does. Please share what your community or hospital does to introduce high school students to the field of nursing.
I work in a city high school. We are a nurse-run site based health center, which includes 3 FNP's, 3 Pscyh NP's, med assts, and billing. Our overseeing MD comes a couple times a month for mostly chart reveiws and she sees pt's then if needed. We see patients for primary care as well as walk-in triage, emergencies, family planning, STD testing. Pretty much whatever they need. There are no copays and the kids get confidential care as they are mature minors.
We are a HUGE example to the kids in our school about nursing and we have generated a lot of interest in the field within our school. (Current enrollment for 7 - 12 grade is about 2200 I think and about 80% of those kids are enrolled in our clinic. Big school!) The kids see nurses doing advanced-practice nursing in a clinical setting. And because I am in nursing school, lots of them come in to talk to me about what they need to do in high school to prep for nursing school and who to call at the colleges etc.
We decided to take it up a notch and had a very successful Health Career Day where we had representatives from all walks of health care come and set up tables in the commons area during lunch periods. We had nurses, a medical temp agency, pharmacist, respiratory therapist, massage therapist, dental hygenist, CNA's... I can't remember who else. It was a HUGE hit with the kids and staff alike.
Maybe you could ask your school to organize something like that? It was great fun.
Note, we are not the school nurses. I say that because the role of school nurse in the setting where I work is way less clinical and way more clerical and organizational. The school nurses don't do a quarter of the clinical stuff we do in the clinic even tho we are in the same physical space and they did not participate in the career fair. So maybe you might want to look for outside agencies within your kids' school. If you have a teaching hospital or college, maybe the nursing department there could put on a program for the local kids. Our clinic is an offshoot of the community nursing center/school of nursing at our largest hospital/university.
I would love to see a shadowing program where a nurse would spend a day with a high school student taking them around to various areas, standing in the background with them and observing while explaining the basics of what was going on, i.e. a brief surgery, PACU, L & D, nicu/nursery, oncology, critical care, med/surg, endoscopy, interv. radiology, ER...whatever was available for the day. Obviously no time for ALL of them, but a nice range from the list. It's hard to get a picture of nursing from spending a morning on med/surg because there are so many completely different worlds in nursing. Not to mention psych, home care, office, clinics, etc. I would like to see students get an introductory talk emphasizing the flexibility of nursing, the autonomy, the critical thinking skills developed, the rewards of doing work that actually MEANS something, not just makes a company make money, as in so many other fields. Then a flash of different realms of nursing to illustrate the points in the introductory talk. There are some great ideas that have been posted on this site so far, keep them coming! The average age of nurses continues to grow higher, and students in nursing school are very often people who choose nursing as a second career, or as an afterthought because of something a friend or relative put into their mind, as was the case with me. Why not make it a first thought for high schoolers?
I never really knew what a nurse DID, just that they worked in a hospital, you had to not mind blood and you gave shots. As one poster insightfully remarked, even if few high school students going through an Intro to Nursing day went into nursing, the gradual expanding awareness of what nursing is really all about would be invaluable to uplifting the image of our profession. Agree?
when i was in highschool they offered allied health programs at the vocational center across campus from the highschool. i took all they had to offer and learned how to take vitals, terminology, charting, cpr, etc. the classes were taught by a really great lady that had been a nurse for 32 years. those classes are what i remember most about highschool. i wish that we had some sort of "shadowing" program or cna program back then. i think it would have been great to graduate higschool with a cna certificate. with a cna certificate it gives highschoolers the foot in the door they need to be able to decide what degree they want to pursue, not to mentiong the money to help pay for college lol!
Well had the opportunity to talk with the hospital CEO and brought up this very topic! We are going to talk again about this and I still need MORE ideas on how we nurses can introduce the field of nursing in a positive way to high schoolers. Something that could be done in a day or a short period of time that wouldn't require students to sacrifice some other class in order to look into nursing. Maybe some type of summer shadowing program or evenings? My old employer had something set up with high schoolers coming in on the evening shift...I remember them being in the newborn nursery for a number of days, but i tried to block out all memories of that job, so I don't know any details :uhoh21:
the thing is i am almost not a minor anymore. in september i will be 18. Yes I do know my way around the hospital. I have been the the ER twice or three times and have had four surgeries (soon to be five in aug) When I go to have my pre-op appointment I may stop in and talk to someone in the nursing office and explain myself in person. Do you think that might help/?
Sorry to be slow getting back to this. Yes, I think a visit to the nursing office would be a great idea.
I've also been recalling that our local community hospital has high school students as volunteers--they even wear candy stripes. My hospital has volunteers, too, but I'm not sure of their ages. They look very young, but lately it seems like EVERYBODY looks very young. Except my patients, most of the time.
I'm really liking the idea of a shadow program. Never mind the advantages for those who would go on to become nurses. How many who kind of like the idea might learn, early on, that maybe it isn't for them, after all, opening slots in nursing school for people who are sure they do want it? And how many would then be part of a general public that had a better idea of what nursing is than what they see on ER? But, of course, the real gold would be what it would do to give future nurses a head start.
My daughter is taking Intro to Health Care, Human Anatomy and Medical Terminolgy, CNA class all this year at her High SChool and she will be getting High School and college credit for it. I think it is great. She is a junior this year. She is able to take them thru the community college. I think it is great that they offer these classes.
In Edmonton Alberta, there is a program called "Careers: the next gerneation" (soudns liek a cheap star trek rip off to me, anyways) and it has a health careers program, and it allows HS students to work 6-8 week summer internships. Being High school students we obviosulyt cna only work certain positiions, but most ehalthcare facilites are really glad to ahev students. The program is joint between Capital Helath, the Alberta gov. and some private clinics/home etc. MOst palces including hospitals really apreciate it sicne during the sumemr they have very few students as Uni. is out for the sumemr for most programs. My brother worked with physio at a Rehab Hospital (Glenrose) and I am working at a continuing cAre centre/lodge with recreation. I get to see what nurses do etc and it is what partially turned me to this career. The program is for grade 11 studfents and only grade 12s can return if they are going into a health realted field in post secondary ed.
Also my school ahs a mentorship program where students are paried with Uni. Studfetns and other randmom people in the career of their choice. This year i put nurse as i was intereseted in medicine,a dn i got paired with a uni prof, and he was great help to me
Both programs howevor are only for honour students.
Also my aunt an RN at the big hopsitla in the City (U of A hosp.) in neonatal ICU tried toa rrange a job shadow howevro it took literally sicne september toget the paperwokr through for it to happen. Thats way to long. If it was shortened to a simple progress i think they would peek much more interest. My first post ~Loquacity
Thanks to all who have shared local program info so far. I feel getting teens to consider nursing is very important in the long run for nursing. We know of many colleagues who went to college for this or that, or worked in different fields and then finally came around to realizing that nursing is where they belonged. Imagine if they had that thought at age 16 or 17! Going to college would have been so less complicated!
Please post here with what is going on in your community! And if yours, like mine, falls short, think about some of these programs you read in this thread, talk to your PTA president, the principal at your child's middle and high schools, your hospital bigwigs, their "recruitment and retention" committee or Human Resource manager. Your kid's guidance counselors. Tell them what others have and ask for the same!
MIA-RN1, RN
1,329 Posts
I work in a city high school. We are a nurse-run site based health center, which includes 3 FNP's, 3 Pscyh NP's, med assts, and billing. Our overseeing MD comes a couple times a month for mostly chart reveiws and she sees pt's then if needed. We see patients for primary care as well as walk-in triage, emergencies, family planning, STD testing. Pretty much whatever they need. There are no copays and the kids get confidential care as they are mature minors.
We are a HUGE example to the kids in our school about nursing and we have generated a lot of interest in the field within our school. (Current enrollment for 7 - 12 grade is about 2200 I think and about 80% of those kids are enrolled in our clinic. Big school!) The kids see nurses doing advanced-practice nursing in a clinical setting. And because I am in nursing school, lots of them come in to talk to me about what they need to do in high school to prep for nursing school and who to call at the colleges etc.
We decided to take it up a notch and had a very successful Health Career Day where we had representatives from all walks of health care come and set up tables in the commons area during lunch periods. We had nurses, a medical temp agency, pharmacist, respiratory therapist, massage therapist, dental hygenist, CNA's... I can't remember who else. It was a HUGE hit with the kids and staff alike.
Maybe you could ask your school to organize something like that? It was great fun.
Note, we are not the school nurses. I say that because the role of school nurse in the setting where I work is way less clinical and way more clerical and organizational. The school nurses don't do a quarter of the clinical stuff we do in the clinic even tho we are in the same physical space and they did not participate in the career fair. So maybe you might want to look for outside agencies within your kids' school. If you have a teaching hospital or college, maybe the nursing department there could put on a program for the local kids. Our clinic is an offshoot of the community nursing center/school of nursing at our largest hospital/university.