Floyd students complete RRMC internship
Redmond CEO John Quinlivan hopes to expand the hospital internship program next year.
Life’s journey is just beginning for three Floyd County students honored for completing a year’s internship at Redmond Regional Medical Center on Thursday.
Pike Delevie and Joshua Edwards, who graduated from Model High last year, and Brian White, who will graduate from Pepperell this weekend, have spent the past school year rotating through departments at the hospital to get a hands-on work opportunity through the nationwide Project SEARCH program.
Project SEARCH is a high school transition partnership between the county schools and Redmond. CEO John Quinlivan said he expects to grow participation from four to seven students in the next school year.
Jackson told the students they never would outgrow the need for a mentor.
“You are going to continue to need mentors the rest of your life,” Jackson said.
The superintendent said that getting students a diploma and getting them out the door doesn’t necessarily give them the life skills to succeed after graduation.
“We really need to work with our students before they graduate and give them some opportunities to see what they really love,” Jackson
The students rotated through positions in the laboratory, radiology, nutrition, outpatient services and materials management departments at the hospital for the past ten months.
“I’m glad that I graduated, this has given me the chance to get a great job,” Edwards told personnel from the school system and hospital during a brief ceremony at the hospital Thursday afternoon
Delevie said before he started that he was “as nervous as a peacock getting its feathers clipped.”
After starting his first rotation in the lab, Delevie said he really started to enjoy the job.
“I learned a lot from Project SEARCH, I learned that I need not to fear stuff because I might end up liking it,” Delevie said.
He told the audience he also learned to believe in himself and ended up getting his learner’s permit to drive.
White thanked everybody from his family to teachers to the hospital mentors that helped him navigate the program for the past year.
Project SEARCH was developed in 1996 at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center to serve people with developmental disabilities fill some high-turnover entry-level positions, a point that Jackson stressed to hospital leadership.