Healthy dose of medicine
ASPIRING medical students at Chinchilla State High School took park in the annual Aspire 2 Health program this week, giving them a taste of life as a medical professional.
Queensland Rural Medical Education CEO Megan O’Shannessy said the program had been designed to reflect the huge diversity in health careers and helps students embark on a lifechanging yet rewarding pathway.
“We’re keen to meet and talk to the students – they are potentially the next generation of health professionals who will build the health system of the future.”
Participating in the Aspire2Health program, Year 11 student Katie Fitzgerald said she had always known she was destined to work as a medical professional.
“I’m hoping to be in a paramedic role, or the emergency department,” she said.
“I just like helping people, and the fact that I can be hands on a deal with other serious scenarios, and pressure – it interests me.”
Although faced with hypothetical scenarios during the program, Katie said she’s had to face some pretty tough ones in her real life.
“I had a 10-year-old girl dislocate her elbow, and it was popping out of the other side of her arm … I also saved someone from drowning,” she said.
Year-10-student Keegan Luckraft said he loved being involved in the program as he planned to study radiology at QUT after finishing high school.
“It seems like a great field of work … it’s very broad and interesting and very physics based which I really enjoy, and you can stem off into a lot of different directions.”
Cameron Rowling, 15, said his favourite part of the day, “was definitely the activities and talking to each individual in their profession – there was an exercise physiologist, midwife, paramedic, professor, and an otolaryngologists.”. “I’d like to go to UQ and study rehabilitation … just to help someone who can’t do anything get back to who they were, and it would be rewarding as well.”