COLUMBUS, Ohio — A central Ohio collaboration of schools, a hospital system and a career and technical center may be what helps cut through a growing health care crisis.
OhioHealth is working with South-Western City Schools and Tolles Career and Technical Center to build a work-based learning program that creates an essential pipeline that could fill jobs in careers including pharmacy, medical assistant and nursing.
For Justice Brown, the hallways at Doctors Hospital looked different than the ones from her high school.
“It was a little intimidating at first. All these people [were] way older than me. It was a little bit scary at first,” she said.
Now, Brown is fearless in her work as a patient support assistant (PSA).
Brown and her PSA colleague Kiersten Dolby are a part of the pipeline created in a collaboration between OhioHealth and the school systems.
“[The program] helps solidify that I want to do this because it really showed me that this is what I want to do,” Dolby said.
Bridging career technical education with hands-on work experience is intentional to address the staffing crisis in hospitals and to create the next workforce generation.
OhioHealth expanded its hiring policy for teenagers 16 and older, including the PSA position to work with nurses in an entry-level role.
“It helps us because our goal is to create a health care pipeline for nurses, so they come in and work their senior year. Then, when they graduate, they can continue to work for us so they can go to nursing school,” said Mindy Sanford with OhioHealth.
The program is in place at OhioHealth Dublin Methodist, OhioHealth Doctors, and OhioHealth Grove City Hospitals. Students apply for an internship that puts them in a Patient Support Assistant-intern (PSA-i) role. They earn $18 an hour and could be eligible for tuition reimbursement.