Carson High School junior Maria Benshoof, far left, senior Ana Marroquin and health sciences teacher Kelly Gustafson.
Jessica Garcia/Nevada Appeal
Senior Ana Marroquin entered Carson High School’s Career and Technical Education medical assisting program with a family history.
“I grew up watching family members be in the health care field,” Marroquin said. “I saw my uncles become doctors. My mom had a huge, huge opportunity to become a nurse. And so for myself, seeing all that growing up and being able to have the opportunities here in high school has definitely sparked my interest into becoming a doctor.”
February is Career and Technical Education Month. State departments and schools at all levels traditionally celebrate programs and campaigns that prepare students for college and the workforce. Nevada’s public and private schools have provided students connections to businesses and community colleges, trade schools, the military and employers through job fairs, activities or other events.
Kelly Gustafson, CHS health sciences teacher, said CTE allows students to explore workplace opportunities and to get their foot in the door for jobs.
“It’s not just the state, but it’s the real world, the job opportunities, the certifications, national certifications and things like that, that we have to make sure that we teach to them and make sure that those students who come out of our programs can pass those tests — not just the state Department of Ed(ucation) tests for CTE, but the actual state EMS (Emergency Medical Services) tests or the national health care associations,” she said.
NDE graduation rates for CTE students have increased from 93.2% for the Class of 2020 to 96.9% for the Class of 2024. More than 50 CTE programs of study were restructured to provide students with more opportunities to participate in CTE, work-based learning, CTE dual credit and to earn industry credentials while improving alignment with Nevada’s economic needs.
CTE programs offer a multitude of programs of study for student coursework. Health care in Nevada especially is a high-demand industry for which Carson High School offers a curriculum to train future workers. Students study for certifications including OSHA 10 on the industry’s safety standards and the American Heart Association’s Basic Life Support. Those in the medical assisting program, for example, are credentialed in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and receive a medical assistant certification. They are well prepared to take the Certified Clinical Medical Assistant exam at the end. If they pass, they’re often offered jobs in clinics or hospitals, giving the state a viable pipeline of workers, one of the NDE’s CTE strategic goals.
Other pathways include sports medicine or emergency medical technician.
CHS junior Maria Benshoof wants to apply the skills she is acquiring to a career in orthopedic oncology but remains open to other specialties. Benshoof became a member of the Career and Technical Student Organization Health Occupations Students of America. HOSA’s mission furthers health care opportunities and increases quality health care in the community.
“This class lays a really strong foundation in how to screen in patients, how to check them in … and it focuses more on the administrative side of it,” Benshoof said. “And then next year, advanced medical assisting will focus more on the clinical application. We’re getting a lot of new lab supplies that will be very beneficial for that next year, so that’s super exciting as something that’s coming up.”
Marroquin and Benshoof are both Advanced Placement and Honors students and said preparation from their upper coursework will benefit their next steps. The training is a doorway to CTE participants who want the headstart on undergraduate courses early. It also establishes healthy study habits and discipline.
“Since I have taken all the possible science classes, I decided to take honors forensics as it gives a different side to the medical field as well as EMT,” said Marroquin, who has been accepted to the University of Southern California. “It gives me enough background in case of emergency situations that I would not have learned with medical assisting, but both, hand in hand, have really prepared for the exam coming up.”
When she attends USC, she’ll have a position lined up at the university’s health center.
“Also, because of the certification, I will get this summer, I am able to work here in Carson at the Carson health care clinic as a beginner, obviously, as an intern almost, but the skills that I have learned, they refer most to vitals and how to take care of a patient, how to check them in, how to do administrative work, and that’s a huge part of what we’re learning right now,” Marroquin said.
Gustafson said students’ exposure to real job encounters helps them in the long term.
“We’ve had students who did a ridealong in EMT and actually saw a deceased patient and questioned if this was something they really wanted to go into,” Gustafson said. “They took a few weeks before and went through some counseling type stuff because they offered that after that kind of situation and then realized, yes, and she is now a paramedic.
“And so, it gives them that opportunity to see in the real world what this is like, what they have to put into it — the effort, the requirements, all of those kind of things, and then be able to make that judgment.”
Carson High’s health care program has a working relationship with Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center that paused during COVID-19 but since has restarted to allow students to job shadow and apply for jobs.
“We’re working with Carson Tahoe Medical Group and Dr. Cara Fox, and she gave us a little push at the beginning and … has a whole list of the things that they either want (students) to already have when they come in or to learn on the job as they’re working,” Gustafson said. “We’ve already had one student hired as a medical assistant.”
Nevada Department of Training and Rehabilitation’s 2022-24 short-term estimates indicated there would be 1,137 medical assistant openings. According to CCSD data, approximately 26 openings become available annually for medical assistants with a 17% growth rate and 31 projected new jobs each year in Carson City.
“I would say don’t only talk to professionals,” Marroquin said. “Talk to students, talk to undergrads, talk to family and friends. They all have different perspectives on all the careers. So what a professional will say is so different from what a student will say, and so sometimes those opinions can change the way you think of a career option.”
“I would say just expose yourself to as many different things as you can because it’s hard to imagine what something’s going to be like if you’ve never actually experienced it,” Benshoof said. “So you might be thinking to yourself, ‘Oh, I really want to be a lawyer,’ but you don’t actually know what that’s like.”