Skills day aims to entice Barrhead students into medical careers

BARRHEAD - Barrhead has a lot of potential untapped medical talent.

However, the question is how the community can tap into that talent by convincing them to enter the medical field and use those talents at home.

That is what Annette Driessen, chair of the Barrhead Attraction and Retention Committee (BARC), said during Skills Day at the Barrhead Healthcare Centre on April 4.

The event, put on in partnership with the Rural Health Professions Action Plan (RhPAP), saw 40 Grade 10 to 12 Barrhead Composite High School students participate in a day where they could experience what a career in a variety of healthcare professions would be like by participating in hands-on health scenarios led by medical professionals.

RhPAP, with the help of local medical professional retention committees, hosts roughly a dozen events at rural high schools across the province. Some of the more recent include events in Drayton Valley and Swan Hills.

County of Barrhead councillor and BARC member Walter Preugschas said RhPAP also sponsors similar events, bringing first- and second-year college and university students to rural communities. He noted that they held one in Barrhead in 2019 and hope to do one again.

Some of the stations students participated in included accident scene stabilization led by EMS paramedics, day surgery and intubation, and laboratory and X-ray demonstrations.

The province established RhPAP in 1991 to address the shortage of medical professionals in rural communities. RhPAP held a similar event in Barrhead five years ago but with university students.

"The purpose of this event is to encourage high school students to consider careers in medicine and the medical fields," she said, adding some of the most talented and renowned medical professionals she has encountered have come from small communities.

Driessen underscored the pressing issue of medical professional shortages, particularly in rural communities like Barrhead. This event, she emphasized, is a crucial step towards addressing this challenge.

She noted that one way to attract medical professionals to rural communities is to encourage more young people from small communities to enter medical careers.

"We want to get them to think that they should consider a career in the medical field when they have to start making those decisions. What better way to do this than to throw them into the hospital, show them some of the skills they will get to perform, and talk to those in those careers?"

The numbers back that up. In May 2022, RhPAP surveyed 547 rural Alberta healthcare providers and found that two-thirds of respondents completed high school in a rural community, and one-third worked in the same community where they finished high school.

Driessen noted that the survey results did not surprise her. She added that she had noticed the same trend in other fields, such as education, pointing to the seemingly large number of educators who completed their grade and high school education in Barrhead and have returned home to teach at local area schools.

"It is also about showing students the value of working and living in a rural community," she said, echoing the sentiments of County of Barrhead Reeve Doug Drozd when he welcomed the students at the hospital. "Why people stay in a community is about something other than the money or the house they can have. It is about the support system that really values them."

Barry Kerton, TownandCountryToday.com