The OTI Junior Academy is a 9 week summer outreach program developed to exposed high school and undergraduate college students to the various facets of the healthcare industry. Specifically, the program leverages different backgrounds of various students and staff through an experiential learning process. The program is broken up into 3 tiers. 1) Professional Development, Lab Training, and Anatomy workshop series, 2) job shadowing of various healthcare professionals 3) hands-on surgical training work as scrub tech intern. Academic rigor is challenging and applicable to all age groups and skill levels. For example, anatomy workshops start off at a basic high school level, then gradually transitions to the college and post-grad levels. All participants take the same quizzes, midterm and final, but the questions are earmarked according to educational level.
The professional development workshops review soft skills that are useful and transferable to any career path but are not necessarily taught in schools. These topics include public speaking, resume writing, interviewing and time management. In the lab training workshops, participants will learn skills that may assist them in a variety of clinical environment and may ultimately steer participant to a career in healthcare. These topics include sterile technique, biohazard safety, radiation safety, set-up/break-down simulation of an operating room. The Anatomy workshops are conducted by Orthopaedic Surgeons that are leaders in the field; each week a different region of the body is reviewed by a surgeon that specializes in that field.
Job shadowing is tailored to expose students to a wide array of healthcare professions. The students will shadow nurses and surgeons, whose roles are better known in the public eye. They will also shadow ancillary medical staff whose occupations are not as well known to the public: CT technicians, casting technicians, physical therapists, podiatrists, physiatrists, radiologists, etc. The healthcare space is so wide and has so much to offer and the OTI Jr. Academy will open their eyes to the other facets of the medical industry. The healthcare system is all interconnected and, as a healthcare professional, it is important to see multiple areas of the system in order to gain perspective in your own work.
Lastly, the participants will gain hands-on experience in a lab setting with their work as surgical training scrub technicians intern. The students work hand in hand with surgical technicians assisting and supplementing the technician’s job tasks. OTI Jr. Academy participants gain practical working experience essential as they progress in their education and career tracks.
For more information, please email OTI.JrAcademy@gmail.com.
