How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Learning about Medical Careers
These days summer camps come in all forms, themes and varieties. Depending on their tastes and preferences, a child could spend the summer trekking nature trails, reading or painting in groups, creating poetry or pottery, playing everything from sports matches to video games, singing by the campfire or in a musical theater performance.
Did you know, though, that your kids also could spend their summer vacations learning about medical careers? Indeed, kids interested in someday becoming a doctor, nurse, medical assistant, or any other variety of healthcare professional can learn a great deal about their chosen professions at today's summer camps.
Some medical schools and healthcare education centers, in fact, offer full scale summer camps for kids interested in learning more about healthcare careers. In these camps students engage in both classroom-style lessons and sessions and interactive learning activities, learning from seasoned professionals about all aspects of the healthcare field. Through these camps they can both gain valuable general knowledge about how to care for others, and they will be given the details and requirements attached to each individual position within the medical field.
This type of immersive camp is geared toward the serious medical student; someone who shows an immediate and intense interest in becoming a medical professional. For children and teens who have a more casual but still substantial interest in the healthcare field, a one-day medical career open house or workshop may be more to their liking. Here they can still immerse themselves in the ins and outs of the healthcare field, but in a shorter time frame; learning the basics that they need to know before choosing this type of career.
In addition, it is an established fact that just about any student who attends a summer camp will learn something about the medical field. At a general nature or sports camp, for example, they might be given a tour of the camp medical clinic; one guided by a doctor or nurse in residence who can give them valuable information about caregivers or caregiving.
At a camp that involves or centers around field trips, kids might be given a tour of a hospital or medical center; seeing the facilities and getting to know the people and equipment that fill them. And at an academic summer camp, they might meet or hear the words of a guest speaker who cares and heals for a living. In their hearts and minds, this person might morph from a typical guest speaker to a role model--or even an eventual mentor.
And at a summer camp that educates kids about different varieties of medical careers, administrators often include a lesson regarding the standard job titles and duties of a physician.
Who knows? You could send a student off to summer camp and get back a medical professional in the making; one who is ready to heal and care for the world. And when someone asks them what they did over their summer vacation, they can say that they set the course of their destinies.
