Program to help students learn about health care profession

Jeffrey Libby

Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2000 | 11:27 a.m.

The Community College of Southern Nevada announced a new partnership Monday that aims to encourage high school students to pursue careers in the critically short-staffed health care profession.

With three new campus nursing labs expected to open within the year and health science classes full, but lacking waiting lists, community college interim President Robert Silverman, said, "we want to prime the pump."

"We're opening programs because industry says we need them," he said.

Those industry leaders, along with education leaders, were by Silverman's side on Monday. They included representatives from Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, Associated Pathologists Laboratories, the Clark County School District and the Southern Nevada Area Health Education Center.

The collaboration initially will offer one survey class for the health profession with plans to expand. The class will be available to about 250 high school juniors and seniors at five area schools.

Silverman said CCSN will pay the salaries of teachers, but he declined to estimate an exact figure on costs. Costs for equipment and other class supplies are expected to be minimal, he said.

The classes, beginning Oct. 9, will be taught after regular school hours by CCSN staff and visiting panelists from the health profession. Students will also have the chance to shadow doctors at CCSN and Sunrise.

The five selected high schools are Silverado, Foothill, Rancho, Western and Cheyenne.

"It's necessary that we have students see, touch and feel the health care industry," said Alan Stipe, CEO of Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center. "There is a critical shortage in nursing nationwide. And with the growth in Nevada it puts additional pressure on hospitals."

Natalie Mazzullo, student program manager with Nevada Area Health Education Centers, who has been educating Clark County at-risk grade schoolers about opportunities in the health profession for seven years, agrees.

"Most children think that the health profession is limited to doctors, dentists and nurses. That's it," Mazzullo said. "But after six weeks in the program -- we had a sixth-grader go from wanting to be a doctor to wanting to be an epidemiologist."

That kind of knowledge and enthusiasm is what Robert Eisen, director of Associated Pathologists Laboratories, in Las Vegas, hopes will reverse a disturbing national trend that is steadily reducing available training in laboratory sciences. Already there is a shortage of laboratory professionals at every level, he said.

"I don't mean to re-emphasize it," said Silverman. "But we need to prime the pump. We have to generate interest to keep the programs populated."