An exciting new partnership between OhioHealth and Pickerington Schools will give 38 high school students unique opportunities to learn about health care firsthand starting this fall.
The students - all members of the district's biomedical sciences program - will be taking classes in a new learning space on the third floor of the new OhioHealth Pickerington Medical Campus building on Refugee Road. The 2,000-square-foot space includes a modern classroom, a conference room, a storage room, and technology that includes new microscopes, micropipette devices, stress testing equipment, smart TVs, 3D printers, and more.
"We'll be working on research topics, such as studying cancer with real cancer cells. They'll be doing diagnoses on mock patients. We'll be doing quality testing on local water. We'll be researching DNA with real DNA. The students are going to be taking part in the kinds of labs that juniors at Ohio State perform," said Andy Harris, biomedical sciences teacher and program lead.
But the biggest benefit of the new partnership is the face-to-face access students will get to real medical professionals and resources in a working medical center.
"The students are going to get the experience of having internships and shadowing opportunities with OhioHealth," Harris said. "These students will observe and learn from professionals actually working in health care."
The students will have opportunities to watch select procedures, both in person and via video technology.
"You can't do this sort of thing inside a school," Harris said. "You can't take blood inside a school building. But here, the rules have changed. We can walk down the hallway and watch that happen. Instead of talking about nurses, they can walk down the hallway and be with a nurse. Instead of talking about emergency rooms, the kids are allowed to go down there and be in the ER and see what happens there."
The biomedical program itself is not new to the district. It began in 2012 thanks to funds from Project Lead the Way, a nonprofit organization and nationwide provider of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education programs.
The 38 students taking classes at the OhioHealth campus this fall are all seniors who are in their fourth year of the biomed program. Harris said they will face new challenges in their final year.
"We have a higher level curriculum," Harris said. "We have a different set of rules now for these students. The 38 kids will have the shadowing and internship opportunities inside this building. They're the students who are motivated to stay in the health care field. They're motivated to develop high-level independent projects, and they're the ones that are already applying for college to go into health care fields."
Harris said the biomed program helps meet a real need in the health care industry, including OhioHealth.
"In the next five years, there will be 3.5 million job openings in health care fields," he said. "Between retiring Baby Boomers and too few people entering these fields in college, we don't have enough people to fill those jobs. This program makes these types of jobs exciting for our students."
OhioHealth representatives say they are excited about this new partnership.
"OhioHealth Pickerington Medical Campus is proud to offer 2,000 square feet of our facility to Pickerington Schools for the cost of one dollar per year," said Rob Davies, Director of the OhioHealth Pickerington Medical Campus.
"Having STEM program students on site to learn in this classroom space, and also to shadow our medical professionals, provides a great opportunity for them to learn about different aspects of healthcare. We are thrilled to be providing this service well into the future and look forward to working with Pickerington students for many years to come."
OhioHealth provided $140,000 for the construction of the school space which the school designed to best fit their needs. It leases the space to Pickerington Local Schools for $1 dollar a year as part of OhioHealth's community benefit.
Davies said OhioHealth sees great benefits to the community.
"It's important to OhioHealth to not only provide healthcare in the community, but also to actively participate in making the community a better place to live and work," Davies said. "Opening this space to the schools, and allowing them to design the space to best suit their needs, is a great opportunity for us. OhioHealth has been involved with Pickerington Schools for years, as our physicians and athletic trainers have provided treatment and sports medicine services for Pickerington student-athletes. Now, with the opening of this building, we have another way to give back to the community and help to give Pickerington students a great learning experience."
The program's enrollment numbers speak volumes about its success.
In May 2015, 16 members of the first group of students to go through the program graduated with the Class of 2015. Of those, 14 planned to attend college in medical-related majors. The program also received national certification from Project Lead the Way last spring.
This year, more than 300 students will be enrolled in biomed classes, and another 300 students signed up for a new "medical detectives" class at the junior high schools.
"We have one of the largest enrollment numbers of biomedical science students in the country, according to Project Lead the Way," Harris said.
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