Bay Area students learn first-hand about health careers at Kaiser Permanente Garfield Innovation Center

San Leandro, Oct. 15, 2013 – About 150 Bay Area high school and community college students aspiring to careers in health got a glimpse of the wide array of jobs in health care that exist today during a day-long Youth Career Day Tuesday at Kaiser Permanente’s Garfield Innovation Center.

In scenarios depicted in mock hospital rooms and settings at the center, the students and their instructors saw the many roles – and possible jobs – that professionals take as they care for patients in hospitals, clinics or, increasingly, homes.

“Through your experience today, our hope is that you gain a more concrete understanding of how the skills, talents, curiosities and passions that you have, and that you wish to develop, might match up with one of the roles and areas you learn about today,” said Linda Monte, a registered nurse for more than 30 years who is Regional Maternal Child Health Clinical Service Director, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Patient Care Services.

In a welcome address to the diverse group of students from Oakland, San Francisco, San Pablo and Sacramento, Monte said the idea behind Kaiser Permanente's first Youth Career Day at the Garfield Innovation Center is to broaden opportunities for young people in Bay Area communities by providing them with a glimpse into the life of a health professional.

“We encourage you to still think about becoming doctors and nurses,” she told the students. “But we also want you to see that the possibilities are many. We hope this is just the beginning of your journey as a health care professional.”

For young students, job-shadowing and internship opportunities in health care facilities are scarce and hard to come by. Working with educational partners, Kaiser Permanente helped develop the program for the Youth Career Day at the Garfield Innovation Center,  located in San Leandro’s industrial west side where Kaiser Permanente tests the latest innovations in health care practices.

“This is the place where Kaiser Permanente develops and evaluates new strategies to support the total health and wellness of the communities we serve – from design, to technology, to team collaboration, to patient and family engagement,” said Monte. It was the perfect venue to introduce students to the variety of professional roles in health care.

Participating students observed staged, life-like scenes with actors and medical mannequins in a labor and delivery room; an operating room where they felt and maneuvered surgical instruments; a general hospital where they learned about patient recovery; an outpatient clinic where they saw an actor with a mock broken leg treated; and a home health setting that explored the use of technology.

Many of the actors in the scenes were performers and health educators from Kaiser Permanente’s Educational Theater. Others were Kaiser Permanente nurses, sharing their expertise.

“I saw a broken leg scenario and that was pretty cool.  I knew a lot of other people are involved in taking care of a patient but I didn’t know just how many. There were a lot,” said Namari Kirven, an 11th grade student at Oakland Technical High School who wants to be a nurse. “For example, today I learned about phlebotomists. That was something I didn’t know.”

For teachers, the Youth Career Day helps broaden the perspective of students looking for careers in health, as they see that the span and variety of professional roles: from admitting clerk to surgeon, radiologist to technology expert to business administrator.

“Hands-on education is the most powerful kind of education. They can see the different jobs in the rotations and they can imagine themselves in those roles,” said Angelica Corral, an 11th grade physiology teacher at Life Academy of Health and Bioscience in Oakland. “And this partnership with Kaiser Permanente brings an important opportunity for these students.”

Another component of the day was providing students and instructors with guidance on what education they would need for a given career and how to find resources - financial aid and support services - to help.

“We want to inspire but we also want to help get them there,” Monte said. “Information like this, provided to youth when they are just starting to think about careers, is critical to having a diverse workforce - something that Kaiser Permanente values so highly.”

About Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente is committed to helping shape the future of health care. We are recognized as one of America’s leading health care providers and not-for-profit health plans. Founded in 1945, our mission is to provide high-quality, affordable health care services and to improve the health of our members and the communities we serve. We currently serve 9.1 million members in eight states and the District of Columbia. Care for members and patients is focused on their total health and guided by their personal physicians, specialists and team of caregivers. Our expert and caring medical teams are empowered and supported by industry-leading technology advances and tools for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the-art care delivery and world-class chronic disease management. Kaiser Permanente is dedicated to care innovations, clinical research, health education and the support of community health. For more information, go to: kp.org/share.