Healthcare Career “Faces of the Future” Day is a huge success
Healthcare Career Day tour of the Radiology Department at VMH ... The Veterans Memorial Hospital’s Large Conference Room was filled to capacity with 30 high school students from area school systems who eagerly signed up to attend the “Faces of the Future” health care career day October 13. Pictured above is a scene of the students touring the Radiology Department at the hospital. Submitted photo.
October 13, a “Faces of the Future” health care career day was held at Veterans Memorial Hospital (VMH) thanks to the coordination of Corinne Cook, RN, and Northeast Iowa Community College (NICC). The hospital’s Large Conference Room was completely filled with 30 high school students from the area school systems who quickly signed-up to attend this filled to capacity event.
These students spent the school day at the hospital learning about a wide variety of health care careers including nursing, nursing assistant, health information management/medical records, medical assistant, phlebotomy, clinical, respiratory therapy, laboratory, x-ray, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and sports medicine, pharmacy, nutrition, informatics, dietetics, behavioral health, home care, dental assistant, surgery, paramedic and emergency medical technician.
“What a great day it is for students to learn not just about jobs in the healthcare field, but to learn about local opportunities,” states Becky Steffans, NICC College and Career Coach. “The partnership that the schools, hospital and NICC has is invaluable and great for the future of our communities!”
Corinne Cook, RN, is retired from nursing full-time at Veterans Memorial Hospital, but still helps out on occasion for special educational programs such as this. She also teaches nursing and nursing assistant classes at NICC. She states, “It is very rewarding to be a part of the collaboration between NICC, VMH and the local school districts. During the day the students spent at VMH, they were provided insight to many career options in the Healthcare field.”
Many of Cook’s students commented on the event as well, with the following statements:
• Very interesting and informational. Know a lot more now about healthcare than I did before!
• I enjoyed it because it opens your eyes into the healthcare community and field.
• It was a great opportunity to experience all of the options within healthcare!
• I learned that each person has a different schedule.
• I found it interesting to learn about how many different job opportunities there are. I liked seeing all of the behind the scene job options.
• I liked learning about the EMTs and what they do. I am going to look into it more because of today.
• I never realized our local hospital had all of these departments.
• After today, I am definitely looking into behavioral psych!
• I liked learning about all the different jobs and what they do. It’s nice to see how everyone does their part to help people.
• Today went really good. Everyone was really nice and my favorite thing was going to see the radiology tech room.
• I enjoyed learning about medical laboratory work, surgery and the schooling/training requirements for certain occupations.
• I had a great time. Everyone was so kind and gave helpful answers to questions. I am also thankful they have an EMT class to take from NICC.
• How many different opportunities there are and if you need help, there are lots of people to help you get to where you want to be.
The “Healthcare Faces of the Future” career day is made possible thanks to support from the Allamakee County Community Foundation. Cook plans to coordinate the next health care career “Faces of the Future” day in the fall of 2027. For more information, contact the Waukon NICC office at 563-568-3060.
