HARLINGEN — COVID sunk the world into a terrifying nightmare two years ago, and from that tragic occurrence has arisen new directions for many.
Out of the wreckage of the pandemic, many young people have stepped up and taken the challenges of new opportunities — and responsibilities.
Such is the case with high school students in the Valley Baptist Medical Center LVN program. The students spend their mornings in class at the Harlingen School of Health Professions. The rest of the day they’re at Valley Baptist taking college-level classes to earn their certifications as licensed vocational nurses.
“I would say out of all the programs we have here it’s one of the ones that gives you the most experience in health care,” said Gabrielle Reyes, 18, a senior.
“You’re actually on the floor and you’re going to be using a lot more skills than in any of the other programs,” Gabrielle said. “The most challenging part, I think, is probably the workload, because this isn’t a high school program. This is with Valley Baptist, so they very much treat you as an adult and they hold you to that same standard.”
Gabrielle is one of eight students in this year’s cohort. If she passes her LVN exam, she will be in the second cohort of students to graduate in this program since it began – just as COVID was getting underway.
“We basically spent our entire junior year online,” said Ashley Caldera, 17, a senior.
“We were very limited on in-person academics,” Ashley said. “We weren’t able to go in person for lectures so obviously that limited our hands-on experience. So our clinical timelines and everything were definitely restricted.”
But she and her classmates pulled through, and their instructors couldn’t be more pleased.
“Oh, my gosh! I love it, I love it, I love it so much, I love my students,” said Maureen Livermore-Rattray, an instructor.
“I love teaching them, because I don’t just teach them the coursework, I also teach them life lessons as well,” she said. “I teach them things as basic as saying thank you and please, thanking people for things that they’ve done for them.”
The coursework covers a broad range of subjects related to nursing: anatomy and physiology, foundations, fundamentals and pharmacology.
There’s a lot of material to cover for young people aspiring to be 21st century nurses.
“They are in a dual program, so they still have their schoolwork from HSHP,” Livermore-Rattray said. “Then they have clinicals, then they have our in-classroom lectures, they have exams, I mean it’s tough. It’s tough, and if they are not, like on board and studying and reading their books, they can be left behind. And so we encourage them to read, to organize themselves so that they are not falling behind.”
Young nursing students are always in demand, but in this new and unexpected era there is a new urgency, said Janis Baker, director of the vocational nursing program at Valley Baptist.
“COVID has actually reduced the number of nurses in the workforce,” Baker said. “Some have just become tired and burned out. Some are just, ‘This is it, I’m done.’ They don’t want to take a chance with their families.”
And that’s where the HSHP kids come in.
They have impressed Baker and other adult peers with their strength of character and willingness to step up to the challenge of becoming nurses in a COVID world.
“The students are actually in some cases better than our adult students are,” Baker said. “They are still young, and they are so eager to make a difference in some way.”
Lillian Janik, 18, spoke about the high demands of being a high school student in a college setting.
“The people in the LVN program throughout our community are all adults,” Lillian said. “So being a high school senior, you really have to step up the game to a whole different level.”
The students, being in their late teens, are of course still seeking their own path. They each come in with their own perspectives and purposes.
“Some of them want to go into the medical field,” Baker said. “Some are just trying it out. Some want to be doctors, some want to be nurses. They may really jump in with both feet trying to learn as much as they can about what their potential chosen field will be.”
Quite a few, however, decide they’d like to “go ahead and try it”, she said. They get their LVN and then, right after high school graduation, immediately enter college to become registered nurses. And, with their LVN credential already in hand, they have an advantage.
“This is a way for them to get a jump ahead and finance their own way through college towards their RN once they graduate,” Baker said.
Ashley has clear plans about what she’d like to do after high school. She’ll major in biology at Our Lady of the Lake University and do her pre-nursing there. Afterwards she plans to attend nursing school. Later in life she’d like to become a physician’s assistant.
She’s already laid a solid foundation for those plans.
