Students Catch A Case Of Health Career Interest

When Willie Lyons thought about who works in a hospital, he thought of doctors and nurses.

Neither profession held much appeal for him.

So when his business teacher at Lewis and Clark High School asked Lyons if he wanted to participate in a new program that involved working at Deaconess Medical Center, Lyons told him, “No, thanks.”

But his teacher, Bob Lobdell, prevailed.

This fall, Lyons began working part time in the hospital’s central supply unit, which services every department in the hospital.

Lyons is one of 11 students at Lewis and Clark participating in a program that introduces high school students to health-care careers.

Students work part time five days a week. Their pay is a grade and three class credits, Lobdell said.

Students work in various hospital departments, including medical records and radiology, as well as central supply.

Like regular hospital employees, they must apply for the job, be screened for drugs and alcohol, receive the standard battery of vaccinations and promise to observe the hospital’s strict code of confidentiality.

“The whole purpose of the program is not to get students employed in the job they have now but to rotate them through different jobs,” Lobdell said.

Program participants meet for an hour once a week to discuss their jobs, developing a work ethic and even how to handle a prickly boss, Lobdell said.

In turn, Deaconess Medical Center provides the group with guest speakers from different departments to discuss health-care careers and the educational requirements needed to qualify for those positions.

Five mornings a week, for three hours, Lyons reports to Elvis Kirchmeier, central supply unit supervisor, who has been teaching Lyons inventory control, the supply unit’s coded system, and computerized record keeping.

“The entry point of the hospital is not through the front desk but the loading dock,” Kirchmeier said.

Each day, Deaconess receives a United Parcel Service truck filled with hundreds of boxes. Each box must be unloaded and opened, and every item must be counted, Kirchmeier said.

Near the chilly loading dock, Lyons moves through aisle after aisle of steel shelves with a shopping basket. He picks up four boxes of gauze, a pad of yellow paper and three boxes of red pens and checks them off his inventory list, like a meticulous shopper. Lyons then boxes them for delivery to the appropriate department.

Central supply at Deaconess also ships supplies to St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute, Valley Medical Center, and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Kirchmeier said.

After one month working at Deaconess, Lyons learned that a hospital is not just composed of doctors and nurses. It’s like a small city.

And for a hospital to operate, it needs almost as many employees as a city: security officers, warehouse workers, medical secretaries, cooks, drivers and dishwashers.

Hospital workers seem to enjoy having the students in their midst, especially since students are expected to exhibit the same standard of professionalism as their co-workers.

Ann Laherty, who has worked in the central supply unit for nine years, supervises program participant Audrey Wozney, a junior at Lewis and Clark.

“I forgot how much fun it is to have teenagers around. I got my teenagers back,” Laherty said.

Wozney, dressed in a blue hospital gown and hair bonnet, spends her shift packaging sterile instruments in heat-sealed plastic bags and double wrapping stainless steel basins in sterile cotton wrap.

Although the program is in its first year, Lobdell is hoping to expand the number of students in the program from 11 to 15.

Rick Chisholm, vice president of human resource at Deaconess, said expansion of the program to include more students is likely.

“We’ve been working with the Spokane School District in several prevocational and vocational areas,” Chisholm said.

Last summer Deaconess and Lewis and Clark forged a partnership so that students like Lyons and Wozny could have the opportunity to expand their career horizons.

“We’re trying to help our youth, give them some orientation as to what an employer expects,” Chisholm said.

For Lyons, the program has given him a new, enlightened sense of career direction.

Now Lyons is saying he might one day like to work in a hospital setting - as an alcohol and substance abuse counselor.

Lyons laughs at his initial resistance to working at Deaconess.

“I didn’t know how many kinds of things you can do here,” he said.

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