The Health Professions and Related Sciences program here at SUN Tech is only one of the options to pick from, but one of the most competitive programs. As students from SUN Area Technical Institute we Dakota Barnett, a student at Midd-West, and Christopher Mullany, a student at Mifflinburg, were chosen to attend for the class of 2011. This program will guide us to further our careers in the nursing field and continue our careers in becoming professional nurses.

We are already learning so much from medical terminology and abbreviations, to skills such as taking blood pressures, temperatures, and height and weight. We apply these skills in everyday activities, we bath, dress, foot/hand care, and bed making for clinicals.

To become a great nurse we need to practice, practice, and practice! Learning to be a nurse’s aide is the key in being successful in clinicals. We will need fifty theory hours, fifty lab hours, and fifty clinical hours. Clinicals start in February and end in March. We will be traveling to Riverwoods and Evangelical Community Hospital to get a better understanding of what it will be like to work hands on.

If you really love nursing, you can compete in HOSA which stands for Health Occupations Students of America. It is an organization where students from different schools apply their specialty skills to competitions against one another for prizes and money. Only the best place and SUN Tech is known to always place. Categories include: Medical Spelling, Medical Terminology, Health Display and many more.

We take multiple trips to colleges to get a clear view on what it’s like to go to college. For anyone interested in pursuing their career in the medical field, we are also earning four college credits prior to college. We earn college credits from the Harrisburg Area Community College simply by attending Health Professions Program at SUN Tech. We paid the amount of eighty-five dollars (Fifty for the college application and thirty-five for the course) It’s definitely worth it.

At the end of the course, we will have to take a state exam that will determine if we can move onto becoming successful nursing assistants. The standards to pass the test are you must score an eighty or higher. If you fail, you have to retake it until you pass. It’s rare to fail because we all learn so much.

After we graduate, we hope to continue our education in becoming registered nurses. Anyone that wishes to work in the health field, SUN Tech would be a great start. Good luck to anyone pursuing a career in the health field!