{"id":56843,"date":"2025-07-16T18:57:39","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T22:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=56843"},"modified":"2025-07-16T18:57:44","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T22:57:44","slug":"its-so-cool-polk-students-get-hands-on-experience-at-lakeland-regional-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2025\/07\/16\/its-so-cool-polk-students-get-hands-on-experience-at-lakeland-regional-health\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s so cool\u2019: Polk students get hands-on experience at Lakeland Regional Health"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

High school students in Polk County are spending their summer learning about trauma, nuclear medicine and blood at Lakeland Regional Health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to look at your white cells, your red cells, your platelets,\u201d said an instructor to a group of students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday, students got a crash course in pathology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c75% of decisions are made by what we diagnose in the lab,\u201d said the instructor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lakeland Regional Health is hosting a new, free, four-week \u201cDISCOVER summer enrichment program.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each day offers a new facet of the medical field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey help the physician and the nurse figure out how to treat that patient best,\u201d said Samantha McLaws, who is entering her senior year at George Jenkins High School, about people who work in the lab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McLaws wants to work in nursing and said it\u2019s beneficial to go into college already having hands-on experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have to discover in college what we want to do,\u201d she said. \u201cIn this case, I think it\u2019s so cool because we can see many different aspects so we can see behind the scenes like the lab people you may never meet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Karthik Talluru will be a senior this coming school year at Harrison School for the Arts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a career, I want to pursue general surgery and specialize in surgical oncology,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talluru said the summer program has opened his eyes to the size of Polk County and what\u2019s out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI 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\u2019s a lot of these other careers behind the scenes that fulfill those duties,\u201d said Talluru.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talluru said he would like to explore the northeast eventually but is considering returning to Lakeland to work later in his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Polk County\u2019s population on the rise, local hospitals are in need of more medical professionals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s 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,\u201d said Lauren Springfield, director of community health at Lakeland Regional Health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other topics covered in the program include emergency care, college readiness and other specialty fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program ends with a graduation next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

High school students in Polk County are spending their summer learning about trauma, nuclear medicine and blood at Lakeland Regional Health. \u201cWe\u2019re going to look at your white cells, your… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMDdcL0thcnRoaWstLndlYnA_Zml0PTg3NiUyQzQ5MiZzc2w9MSIsInR4dCI6Ilx1MjAxOEl0XHUyMDE5cyBzbyBjb29sXHUyMDE5OiBQb2xrIHN0dWRlbnRzIGdldCBoYW5kcy1vbiBleHBlcmllbmNlIGF0IExha2VsYW5kIFJlZ2lvbmFsIEhlYWx0aCIsInRlbXBsYXRlIjoiaGlnaHdheSIsImJsb2dfaWQiOjE2MzA0MDY2MX0.kFgW2d5he_2nEwu2949U0tLHXMw7F107yuPpHEoCREIMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":56844,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Karthik-.webp","type":"image\/webp"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[11845],"class_list":["post-56843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-its-so-cool-polk-students-get-hands-on-experience-at-lakeland-regional-health"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56845,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56843\/revisions\/56845"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}