Surgeons, Doctors, and Nurses, beware. There is whole new generation out to steal your jobs. Meet Future Health Professions. Created back in 2007, the club is led by biology teacher and 2014 class cabinet advisor, Ms. Mary Scott.
“Future Health Professions is basically a club about the awareness of getting students to know about different medical field opportunities that they have. We bring in guest speakers and get them more familiar with the field and not make them feel like a lost duckling when they are in college” explained Nikita Patel, Co-Vice President.
President Layla Annous also added, “Our goal is to expose everyone to different health professions and get them involved whether you want to be a doctor or a nurse or a surgical tech or anything even science related. And it exposes you to all the different types of health professions and guest speakers also come in and speak.”
Additionally, Scott sees the club as a clear extension of the academic curriculum .
“I think as a science teacher the hope is that everybody whether it’s a Math teacher or an English teacher or a Spanish teacher would all want to think that their content is so important that people want to go out and major in it in college. I think that here in North Penn in this unique situation where we have a lot of students who are so much interested in science, I think that for the majority of individuals who want to go into medicine whether it be doctor or nurse or physical therapy or an EMT or a medical lab tech, I think it’s nice that they get, especially in the High School level, not only exposure in the classroom but exposure outside the classroom with guest speakers to kind of get them in the right direction. And I think that having these guest speakers and people coming in to chit chat with them gives them a different and broader perspective when they are applying to college and to know what courses they need. Like the number of kids who think they need to science major in order to be in the medical field and you don’t.”
And to all of those who are wondering the million dollar question: Do you have to be going into the medical field in order to join? “Anybody can join, anyone that wants to come and is interested in hearing more about the heath occupations that are out there, come join the club. It’s open to any sophomore, junior, or senior and it’s a five dollar due requirement and basically that five dollars goes to get the guest speakers and the end of the year any money raised goes to an organization of the student’s choice like last year we made a donation to the American Cancer Society” explained Scott.
Future Health Professions is also branching out this year and adding in more fundraisers. “Basically this month was childhood cancer awareness month and the color was gold so we made gold ribbons and gave them out to students who signed up. And we’re going to do some kind of fundraiser each month that brings light to different parts of the world health wise” Patel mentioned.