SYRACUSE, NY (WSYR-TV) – There’s a real need for healthcare workers everywhere, and a new study shows that demand is only going to grow in the next 10 years.
By 2025, there’s expected to be a shortage of more than 400,000 home aides, 29,000 nurses and hundreds of more open positions in the medical field.
Upstate Medical University is helping to shape the future of the industry. A new program is giving high school students who attend Syracuse City Schools a “jumpstart” into what organizers hope is a lengthy career in the medical field.
“Jump Into Healthcare” is a 4.5 week intensive summer program that allows students to explore the wide range of health careers available.
Dean of Upstate Medical College of Health Professions, Katherine Beissner, says the goal of the program is to take students through an engaging curriculum while exposing them to different medical careers and building their research and presentation skills.
For Bayan Aboamer, a rising senior at Henninger High School, she’s always known she wanted to pursue a career in the medical field.
“I’m actually looking to become a cardiothoracic surgeon. When I first heard about the program from my friend and she told me about it, I thought this is a great chance for me to explore more.”
BAYAN ABOAMER, JUMP INTO HEALTHCARE STUDENT
Aboamer and eleven other SCSD students learn using a problem-based curriculum, but what exactly does that entail?
Rather than being didactic where we have an instructor lecturing, we have a case that drives their learning, so they get a little snippet of information and then look up all the terms they don’t know and try to figure out what it means, what they know and what they don’t know, and then they get another snippet of information. They get to look at what on earth those lab values mean and what’s normal, what’s abnormal, and progress through that.
KATHERINE BEISSNER, DEAN, UPSTATE MEDICAL COLLEGE OF HEALTH PROFESSIONS
“When I got in, I didn’t expect it to be this fun!”
BAYAN ABOAMER, JUMP INTO HEALTHCARE STUDENT
For Dean Beissner, this is her passion and a project that’s been in the works for quite some time.
“This is really why I’m here. This what I love to do. It thrills me. This has been on my mind for 4 years, a project in development for 4 years, and we really need a more diverse healthcare workforce in order to deal with the health disparities that we see often in our community.”
KATHERINE BEISSNER, DEAN, UPSTATE MEDICAL COLLEGE OF HEALTH PROFESSIONS
A grant from the Green Family Foundation, Inc. helped develop and launch the program in 2020, but then the pandemic hit, making this year’s class the first.
“Jump Into Healthcare” wraps up this week on July 29. Dean Beissner said she hopes to secure more funding in order for this program to continue.
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