AHEC helps students find career direction

• By C.J. FUTCH
• Advocate River parishes bureau
• Published: Jul 9, 2009

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

GONZALES — Nikia Martin will be a senior at Donaldsonville High School in August, and at the start of the summer, she was sure she wanted to be a pediatric nurse.

In the past five weeks, however, she’s spent time rotating to different hospital departments with the Area Health Education Center program for high school students, and had a change of heart.

Actually, she had more than one change of heart.

“I changed to phlebotomy, then I wanted to be a (operating room) nurse,” she said July 2 at the graduation of students taking part in the AHEC program at St. Elizabeth Hospital.

Something clicked for the volunteer, clad in purple like the nine other AHEC graduates in the room, when she started her rotation in senior care.

“At first, I thought it would be boring,” Martin, who got the “Most Outstanding” award at the ceremony. “But the people there — I mean, sometimes, they were grouchy, but in two days, I’d really formed an emotional bond (with the clients.) I cried when they left.”

Lauren Bahlinger, the AHEC educator at St. Elizabeth, said that’s exactly what the program was designed to do.

Bahlinger has heard too many stories to count about students spending time, money and energy in one field, only to realize it’s not for them when they get a taste of what the job entails.

The process to get into the AHEC program is competitive, she said. Each candidate is required to go through an application process that culminates in a panel interview. The panel ultimately chooses the participants.

AHEC, she said, gives them a first-hand look at the daily grind in many areas of the health-care field, including radiology, cardio pulmonary, emergency room, surgery and senior care.

“We did a health-care systems approach,” Bahlinger said. Students did classroom work for half the day, then spent time in working in 10 different units of the hospital for half the day, she said.

AHEC serves two purposes for St. Elizabeth, said Rosie Kiper, professional development director for the hospital and coordinator of the AHEC program at St. Elizabeth.

“First of all, we’re a Catholic hospital, and a service-oriented hospital, so this program allows us to be of service to the community,” Kiper said.