KINGWOOD — Students in Preston High’s five medical programs have already taken the first steps toward their careers.
“I’ve always really wanted to go to nursing school, and I thought it would be a really good foundation,” said senior Tori Carr, who is in the medical assistant program. Her next step will be attending West Virginia Wesleyan College for nursing.
“This is what I want my career to be,” noted senior Grace Favro, who is in the Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) program. She will attend Fairmont University after college, in its nursing curriculum.
Teachers Joyce Anderson and Stephanie Martin say their students can either go straight to work after graduation or obtain further education in the field.
Preston High School (PHS) offers students courses in five medical specialties: CNA, pharmacy technician, phlebotomy, EKG technician and medical assistant.
CNAs test for their state certification, which is required for CNAs to work in nursing homes and some other places. The other programs’ grads are tested through a certification company.
Most of the programs require two to three years to complete. For example, pharmacy tech is a 260-hour program. The CNA program requires 55 hours of clinical experience.
The first year of the health occupations cluster provides foundations of health studies. The second year includes advanced principles, anatomy and physiology, and by the final year hands-on experience in hospitals, doctors’ offices, nursing homes and other medical settings.
Once clinicals start, the classes require more commitment, the instructors said. PHS also uses the simulated workplace setting, so students must show up just as they would for a paid job. “But I think they adjust pretty well to it,” Martin said.
“I can feel all my students — to different degrees — once they’re in the clinical setting, and they’re actually working with patients, it clicks. You can see them really enjoying what they’re doing. It’s such a difference from the beginning when they were afraid to do anything, and now they jump in and you can just see them blossom,” Anderson said.
It’s quite different from working with a mannequin or with a book, she said, and brings home why things are done a certain way.
Students agree. Senior Shelbi Field, who is in the CNA program, said the hardest part of the program is leaving patients. But she will be seeing others in the future, as she pursues a degree in nursing at Davis and Elkins College after graduation.
“You get to see every aspect of medicine,” through the program, said senior Alexis Parker, who is also headed to Davis and Elkins after graduation.
Both instructors came to Preston High from the workplace, so they have experience in what they teach. Anderson worked about 45 years as a registered nurse and Martin worked in the intensive care unit for several years. They also had to obtain teaching certification.
“It’s very difficult for someone to teach what we teach in the program if they haven’t worked in the field,” Anderson said. “You have to have that industry background.”
They split the various specialties. Each has 20 students.
The EKG program is incorporated in the other programs, so that students who are CNAs can test for that certification too.
“The jobs are there for them,” after graduation, Anderson said. She and Martin estimated placement in the field is in the high 90 percentages for graduates of PHS’s medical programs.
“Many are going on to college,” Anderson said.
Depending on where they go to college, the students may be able to count some of their classes at PHS for college credit.
