In early February, students from Fairfield, Lakota, Sycamore, Winton Woods and Wyoming school districts attended the inaugural class of the Medical Explorers, a program designed for local high school students who are considering medicine as a career.
The program is the brainchild of Dr. John Kennedy, who serves Mercy Health-Fairfield Hospital as its vice president of medical affairs. He said he believed in the program, but never anticipated how popular it would be, noting the hospital had been “swamped” with applications.
The first Explorers class has 42 students in it, with Kennedy and other nurses, doctors, and physician assistants interacting with them, and volunteering to teach them a number of medical practices.
Medical Explorers, according to Kennedy, is an extension of a program offered by the Boy Scouts. He began the endeavor because there was nothing similar when he was young and thinking about medicine. This way, students get very real practice—they were learning to suture deep wounds on artificial skin—and can determine whether or not the field is for them.
Students, whose GPA averages 3.9, meet at the hospital twice monthly, where they interact with doctors and other staff members, and sometimes shadow them as they work in cardiology, radiology, the lab, the emergency room, or with patients.
As a result of the popularity, Dr. Kennedy might like to make more schools aware of it. He could do so by creating Brochures that describe Medical Explorers, and making them available throughout the area's school systems.
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