High school students in Polk County are spending their summer learning about trauma, nuclear medicine and blood at Lakeland Regional Health.
“We’re going to look at your white cells, your red cells, your platelets,” said an instructor to a group of students.
On Wednesday, students got a crash course in pathology.
“75% of decisions are made by what we diagnose in the lab,” said the instructor.
Lakeland Regional Health is hosting a new, free, four-week “DISCOVER summer enrichment program.”
Each day offers a new facet of the medical field.
“They help the physician and the nurse figure out how to treat that patient best,” said Samantha McLaws, who is entering her senior year at George Jenkins High School, about people who work in the lab.
McLaws wants to work in nursing and said it’s beneficial to go into college already having hands-on experience.
“We have to discover in college what we want to do,” she said. “In this case, I think it’s so cool because we can see many different aspects so we can see behind the scenes like the lab people you may never meet.”
Karthik Talluru will be a senior this coming school year at Harrison School for the Arts.
“As a career, I want to pursue general surgery and specialize in surgical oncology,” he said.
Talluru said the summer program has opened his eyes to the size of Polk County and what’s out there.
“I think it puts a lot of things into perspective because a lot of what we think of when we hear medicine is doctor, surgeon, nurse but there’s a lot of these other careers behind the scenes that fulfill those duties,” said Talluru.
Talluru said he would like to explore the northeast eventually but is considering returning to Lakeland to work later in his life.
With Polk County’s population on the rise, local hospitals are in need of more medical professionals.
“It’s one of the biggest reasons why we now have graduate medical education here at Lakeland Regional. Our goal is to get to these students early, make sure they understand the health of their community,” said Lauren Springfield, director of community health at Lakeland Regional Health.
Other topics covered in the program include emergency care, college readiness and other specialty fields.
The program ends with a graduation next month.