UA Health Services Day targets students with interest in medical field
Some of the top students around Yuma County gathered at Cibola High School Wednesday for the University of Arizona Health Services Day to hear, firsthand, the variety of options in the health sciences program at the university.
UA Yuma Regional Academic Programs Coordinator Tanya Hodges hosted the event, which has taken place annually for nearly a decade, in partnership with “Friends of Arizona Health Services.” Yuma County is the only county that UA participates in this type of informational event.
“We have representatives from medical school, pharmacy school, nursing school, the school of public health,” Hodges said. “The intent is to grow our own doctors and nurses and health professionals. We realized a few years ago that there is a big disconnect between what the students needed to know about the process and the degrees and what they needed to do to prepare themselves to be competitive in the marketplace in competing for these high-profile type of programs.”
Professors and faculty members from the various health services field at the UA Tucson campus were on-hand to discuss their specific field of expertise and explain the academic rigors and demands and how to stand out in the application process. The medical school, for example, receives about 9,000 applicants each year and accepts about 150 students.
“I have been interested in the health field for two years now, so this is my first real experience in learning about how to get into health professions as a career,” said Kofa High School freshman, Alani Martinez, who aspires to be a cardiologist or trauma surgeon.
Another student, Anthony Garcia, a junior from Yuma High School added: “This is about my future career. I want to be a vet, so I want to know how to get there.”
According to Hodges, the intent of the event was to be as informative as possible for Yuma-area ninth through 12th graders and also allow for networking opportunities.
“It’s serving the rural community and those that are underserved, and nobody knows our community better than the students who are raised here,” Hodges said. “I’m from Yuma as well. Our intent is, really, why bring doctors in from other places when we can do it here ourselves.” Yuma Regional Medical Center also partners with UA to provide potential opportunities for Yuma students, offering residency programs in medicine and pharmacy. Students from Yuma, who study in the medical or pharmaceutical fields, would have first priority if they wanted to come back and be a part of residency in rural medicine.
So far, the annual event is paying dividends.
“We are getting more and more students into those very competitive health fields,” Hodges said. “At the hospital (Yuma Regional Medical Center), they are our partner in this as well, they are being able to hire more. Particularly, more nurses are coming back to Yuma and the hope is that we will be able to bring back doctors and pharmacists as well.”