Simran Zalavadia has always known she wants to go into healthcare, and this summer, a University of Virginia program is allowing her to test different careers.
The 16-year-old high schooler is one of 21 teenagers participating in “From Curiosity to Care: Inside Nursing and Healthcare Professions,” a one-week summer camp hosted at UVA Northern Virginia’s Fairfax campus. It is one of several classes offered through , an academic summer program for high school students that offers hands-on courses designed to help them develop new skills, discover interests and explore potential career paths.
“I currently want to get my bachelor’s in nursing and then go to a physician’s assistant school, but that’s subject to change,” she said, “so I signed up for this class to hear about healthcare fields and see if anything will change my mind.”
Instructor Gretchen Wiersma says she hopes this program will raise awareness for lesser-known medical fields. (Contributed photos)
The class is the brainchild of program instructors Gretchen Wiersma, a UVA associate professor of nursing, and Nathan Mart, a workforce development program manager at Inova. Wiersma also teaches the Fairfax cohort of the UVA School of Nursing’s hybrid RN-to-BSN program at UVA Northern Virginia, where registered nurses can earn a Bachelor of Science in Nursing while continuing to work.
In its first year, “The class is to help students understand that there are a lot of different healthcare careers that exist,” Mart said. “So we’ve focused on the two largest clinical areas: nursing and allied health professions, which are basically all positions that aren’t nurse, doctor or nurse practitioner, such as physical therapists, MRI technicians, radiation therapists and pharmacists.”
On the first day, students took a career quiz that matched them to three potential careers. During the week, they gave research presentations on those careers and how they interact with other healthcare fields to provide patient care.
“From the nursing side, we are focusing on teaching basic assessment skills, so that students can have a solid foundation on what it takes to start caring for patients,” Wiersma said. “We divided the class into three groups of seven for a patient assessment skills relay race and had them compete in different activities based on the assessment skills they were taught.”
Kieran Tierney, 17, said her favorite part of the relay was using Glo Germ, a fluorescent gel that simulates real germs. “The people who are running our class are very good at making it fun, while also educational,” she said.
Tierney said she was fascinated by her visit to the simulation lab at Inova, particularly a realistic model simulating a woman giving birth.
