STEM Club tours St. Luke’s, gains insight into potential career opportunities

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the job outlook for healthcare professionals to increase 19.3 percent from 2014 to 2024, contributing approximately 2.3 million new jobs.

Job availability is an important criteria to consider while selecting a career path, but pales in comparison to another criteria: passion towards one’s profession.

The LRHS Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) club traveled to St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute in Spokane last Thursday.

The trip helped the students to gain insight not only into the job opportunities, but why the healthcare professionals working at St. Luke’s are so passionate about what they do.

The field trip was part of the Spokane Business AfterSchool’s healthcare week.

As always, this is the STEM club’s sixth trip to a Business AfterSchool workshops, the program seeks to provide “on-site awareness of Spokane’s high-demand industry sectors by highlighting new technology, research, development and innovation.”

During the workshop, students were able to ask questions to a multidisciplinary panel of healthcare professionals working at St. Luke’s.

This panel of professionals included a pharmacy technician, a physician’s assistant, an occupational therapist, and a speech therapist.

After hearing from the professionals, Sharon Anderson explained, “I was surprised to hear from their employees that they loved their jobs and the atmosphere of St. Luke’s so family oriented.”

Anderson continued, “It’s not often you go into someone’s work place and nobody has any complaints.”

St. Luke’s website reflects the passion of their staff, “We’re proud to be one of the most technologically advanced rehab centers in the United States, and we leverage our innovation every day to help our patients thrive.”

“After all, its perseverance, energy and inner spark—not injuries—that define each of us,” they added.

The next half of the workshop included a guided tour of the state-of-the-art facility. The tour gave students a window into St. Luke’s unique approach to care.

St. Luke’s website explains the difference between traditional healthcare and rehabilitation, “Comprehensive care is about more than just treating an injury. It’s about healing the whole person—mind, body and spirit—and helping them live their fullest, most energetic life yet.”

The St. Luke’s Community impressed Sierra Kiel. It is an indoor simulation of different real world conditions, real size cars, portions of busses, or a model grocery store, that allows recovering patients to practice occupational tasks in the comfort of the hospital.

“I was kind of wondering about when people with disorders or injuries come out of the hospital, and how scared they would be,” Kiel said.

“I think that it’s just a cool idea for them to be able to practice going into the world and just to be totally comfortable,” she continued.

Overall, the trip encouraged students to think about healthcare in a new light, and consider a variety of multidisciplinary careers

“If I were to pick a healthcare career,” Anderson said, “I would consider being an occupational therapist after hearing about the variety of what they do and how they get to experience achievements in their patients’ recovery firsthand.”

Lorria McCauley would pursue recreational therapy: “It would be something that you could do to assist people so that they could get back into doing activities out in public, like going to the park or gardening.”

“I enjoyed the experience,” summarized McCauley. “I liked learning about the different kinds of job opportunities there are.”