Summer youth program introduces youth to health care field
Young adults spend six weeks shadowing hospital professionals
When New Carrollton teenager Telmy Alfaro found out about a health care summer youth program via Riverdale's Multicultural Youth Center this spring, she knew it would give her early exposure to a hospital environment she sought as a nursing student.
But Alfaro, 18, got the last thing she was expecting to receive from the experience: a job.
Alfaro was also among a handful of youths who found employment afterward in the field. She said her parents are proud of her achievement, and the hospital staff, her friends and especially her family are excited about her career path.
"They're proud of me because they know that I'm going to school at the same time I'm working," Alfaro said. "They know this is going to help me gain experience in the hospital."
Alfaro, one of six new hires from this summer's program, will work part-time on weekends in the Prince George's Hospital Center's patient access department while attending Largo's Prince George's Community College this fall for nursing.
The program, held five days a week for six weeks, is meant to expose youth to the world of health care and give them skills they can use in future jobs, said Louise Ross, corporate director of human resources for Dimensions Healthcare System. Each Friday, youth sat in on "Profiles of Healthcare Professionals" talks, in which people like Griffin L. Davis, chair of the hospital's Department of Emergency Medicine, discuss their careers. Youth were paid $8 an hour and worked 40 hours per week.
The academy placed students in different departments where they shadowed full-time employees in fields such as human resources, nursing and public relations on a rotating schedule. Students were placed at Prince George's Hospital Center, Bowie Health Campus, the Gladys Spellman Specialty Hospital & Nursing Center and Laurel Regional Hospital.
"They just really got to see that there are opportunities in health care from A to Z, whether it's administrative, finance accounting, human resources, marketing, facilities, food services as well as the clinical side, the nurses, the doctors, the techs and so forth," Ross said.
While in patient access, Alfaro helped register hospital entrants, put identification wrist bands on patients, answer phone calls and translate for Spanish-speaking patients. Hospital staff praised her work ethic and saw her bilingual skills were an asset to the department, and her supervisor recommended for a part-time position, she said.
The funding was made possible with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money, of which $1.2 billion was distributed nationwide through the U.S. Department of Labor's Workforce Investment System and allocated to expand summer youth employment programs such as KEYS, wrote Marcita Bentley-Pinkston, assistant director for youth services of the PGCEDC workforce services division, in an e-mail to The Gazette.
Bentley-Pinkston wrote that if KEYS receives ARRA funding next year they will do a summer youth academy program similar to this year's, and if not will hold a similar program on a smaller scale.
"The health care industry is a high-demand occupation in Prince George's County, and we were very excited to add Dimensions Health Care System to an extensive list of worksites. We had a wonderful experience working with Dimensions Health Care System in 2009 and we wanted to continue the partnership in 2010," Bentley-Pinkston wrote.
Brianna Brown, 20, of Landover said the experience may be enough for her to switch her major from criminal justice to health care administration at Largo's Prince George's Community College.
Brown worked in case management at Prince George's Hospital Center where she copied patient charts and faxed insurance logs to insurance companies about a patient's discharge date or whether the patient was still hospitalized.
"I like case management, but before I even worked for Prince George's [Hospital Center] I've always had an interest in registration," Brown said. "I met a lot of friends that were actually employees. I got a bunch of contact numbers to call them if I ever needed anything. I met a lot of important people."
nmcgill@gazette.net
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