The last eight weeks have been a busy time for Lydia Young.The Manteca teen-ager who just graduated last year from Connecting Waters, a charter school in Modesto, was one of 15 lucky junior and high school students from Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties who bested 150 others for an internship slot in Kaiser Permanente’s Summer Youth Employment Program.This a program that provides students who are interested in pursuing possible health care careers a firsthand look and experience at different jobs in the medical field by working in various departments of Kaiser Permanente such as emergency, radiology, pharmacy and human resources.As an added bonus for these selected students, their eight-week summer stint which ends today was a paid job.Young’s assignment was in the Manteca Kaiser Permanente’s Human Resources Department. Specifically, her training was in the disability management and compliance divisions under Human Resources with disability case manager Karina Harper as her supervisor.The summer interns were assigned in 15 different departments that included medical specialties, medical supplies, and clinical education.But although Young’s placement was in an office setting, she also had the opportunity to be exposed in the medical area of the hospital. She was allowed to spend a day, for a total of eight hours, job-shadowing a post-partum nurse in that hospital unit.
Youth get taste of medical careers at Kaiser