‘A Whole Other Ball Game’: Summit Students Find Passions, Career Paths Through New Partnership With Vail Health
Rotary Club of Summit County member Chris John wanted to start a program where students could experience professions in health care, so last year he and other club members reached out to Dr. Kendrick Adnan, an urgent care specialist at Vail Health.
Adnan helped start Vail Health Explorers, and after organizers set up a table at a Summit High career fair, Adnan said 25-30 students signed up this year. The program hosts introduction sessions for different medical field specialties, which draw around 15 students, and then students can sign up to shadow specialists in the Vail Health system in smaller groups.
“We started with urgent care,” Adnan said. “We did a Stop the Bleed class with a trauma program through Vail Health, everybody learned how to do Stop the Bleed, and then we dovetailed that with getting students set up with shadowing in the urgent care.”
Any students interested in joining the program next year can find more information and sign up at the next career fair, Adnan said. Students can also reach out to him at ken.adnan@vailhealth.org or Meghan Ahearn-Steven, a physician assistant at Vail Health that helps with the program, at meghan.ahearn@vailhealth.org.
