Lakeland Regional Developing Healthy Talent Pipeline Through High Schools

PHOTOS BY POLK COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Last year, Lake Gibson High School’s Health Academy took a hit when it lost a teaching unit, a tough reality for a long-standing career readiness program that can be difficult to remedy considering it requires professionals with the skills of a nurse or nurse practitioner who are willing to work on a teacher’s salary. Thankfully, Lakeland Leads and Lakeland Regional Health believed strongly enough in furthering public education and creating a pipeline for future healthcare talent to design an innovative solution.

At Lake Gibson, as well as Kathleen High School, Lakeland Regional Health is providing healthcare professionals an annual stipend to sweeten the pot and to encourage more active healthcare faculty to provide hands-on instruction to the next generation as teachers in local schools.

“Superintendent [Heid] has talked about this…but with Lakeland Regional Health, Lake Gibson High is really the first to supplement income for teachers to recruit and retain the best people for our program so that we can continue that workforce education,” said Ryan Vann, Lake Gibson High School Principal and a proud Braves alum himself.  “I explained to [Lakeland Leads President Melody Rider] that if we want to build and grow these programs and we want to be able to push our kids [where] they are able to come out of high school with a phlebotomy certificate or CNA certificate or become EKG certified, we have to have qualified nurses to teach our kids.”

Now, with two RNs and an LPN, Lake Gibson’s Health Academy is set to inspire more teens to take a harder look at the healthcare profession as a potential career path, precisely what the county’s third largest employer would love to see.

“We're really trying to focus on building our workforce and investing in our people. With that I need a pipeline, and the pipeline is the high school students,” said Scott Dimmick, Senior Vice President/ Chief Human Resources Officer for LRH.

LRH has long invested in students with its internship program—which had nearly 150 students immersed in clinical and nonclinical settings  this summer—as well as career expos and job fairs.

One of Dimmick’s goals is to help spark students who might feel lackluster about job prospects by showing them salary ranges and the wide variety of job descriptions that exist in the healthcare industry.

“There are tons and tons of very high paying, very rewarding jobs in healthcare, [and] it’s in huge demand,” he said. “Most of your healthcare companies have great compensation benefit packages and long career prospects…and probably about 80 to 85 percent of our high paying professions only require an associate’s degree in some kind of healthcare specialty.”

It made sense for LRH to partner with Lake Gibson in part because of their proximity to each other and also because Lake Gibson has the highest college and career acceleration point total in the district. Last year, more than 80 percent of seniors graduated with either a dual enrollment course credit, a certificate, ROTC involvement, etc. The high school also had more than 20 students graduate with associates degrees thanks to dual enrollment courses.

Lake Gibson Assistant Principal Matt Diaz, an LGHS alum, said he’s thrilled to build a long-term relationship with a community health provider that cares for so many Lakelanders.

“As educators here, and especially in charge of the CTE (career and technical education) area, all I want is for our kids to have opportunities as soon as they graduate so they can help our community in the greatest way possible,” he said. “And the Lake Gibson community has a lot of LRH employees who live in this school zone, so it’s a big deal for us.”

Dimmick said he has seen that showing students the opportunities that exist has proven to motivate them to be more engaged, study harder, etc., but the benefit to the schools goes beyond that.

“Part of this process too is collaborating with the school district on whether we would recommend additional curriculum or changes in the curriculum or different educational skill building that may be needed to prepare people for a professional occupational setting like healthcare,” he said.

He said customer experience and satisfaction are mission critical in healthcare, so educating more young adults on best practices is essential. Internally, LRH offers staff the Amazing Patient Experience Learning Academy, where they participate in exercises and training that empower them to deliver the best possible experiences to patients.

Speaking of top-notch experiences, Vann is hopeful that this partnership will help pave the way for other career readiness collaborations between businesses or corporations and the school district.

“I think when people see the success of this partnership it’s going to bring more partnerships along the way. Lake Gibson Middle School also has the Health Academy, so hopefully Lakeland Regional can tap into that and get those kids hooked even earlier to want to be in the Health Academy here.”