SPOKANE, Wash. — While many high school students focus on back-to-school shopping, 30 teenagers spent their week getting hands-on medical experience through MultiCare’s new healthcare camp.
The healthcare industry is seeing shortages in workers across the country. Here in Spokane. MultiCare hopes the kids at its Academy for Students in Healthcare, or M.A.S.H. camp, will be the future doctors and nurses at local hospitals.
The Academy for Students in Healthcare brought students from Spokane to Rosalia together for a week of medical training. This is the first time MultiCare has hosted this type of camp in Spokane.
Campers got to job-shadow a variety of medical professionals, which was inspiring for many of the students. Students spent hours in emergency rooms watching patient care and learned from medical professionals in small groups. They practiced CPR, applied colostomy bags, and simulated births.
Sof Harris, an incoming high school senior at Lewis and Clark, even spent a few hours in the emergency room.
“It’s definitely interesting to be in the room. We had a trauma one, so someone who came in off the ambulance. We stood in the room and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, but it’s still cool to be in that atmosphere,” Harris said. “Every second is something new, which is something I really like. I like to be stimulated in the brain.”
The camp exposed students to multiple areas of healthcare beyond emergency medicine.
“On the first day, we did more dental hygiene, and then learning the basics of what nursing is. We did a couple IVs, phlebotomy and all of that. So it’s mainly just a lot of different stations,” Harris said.
Harris says this camp allowed her to figure out the areas of medicine she’s interested in.
“It feels really refreshing to say this is it, this is my passion, what I want to do. Because beforehand, it was an if and when that would be able to be possible,” Harris said.
The camp also helped some students realize healthcare wasn’t for them.
“For some people in the camp, it’s been kind of scary. I know a couple of people have had experiences where they’re like, ‘this is not for me, this is not the job I want to go into.’ Which I think in itself is a blessing to know something before you go to school for six years for it,” Harris said.
MultiCare brought together a team of 45 volunteers to make this camp happen for free. It hopes the camp will give each student advice and mentorship for taking their first steps towards a career in medicine.
Katie Van Deusen, a workforce development recruiter for MultiCare, said the camp aims to give back to the community.
“We involve so many members of the community who come together to support these students and give opportunities to these students and showcase these healthcare careers,” Van Deusen said.
MultiCare hopes to bring even more students to next year’s camp.
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