COVINGTON, Ky. — Nineteen local high school students took part in St. Elizabeth Healthcare's Moon Program, meant to give students a chance to see what the life of a healthcare worker is like.
"It's a really unique experience for some of the kids," said the program's founder, Dr. Ryan Moon. "What I hoped to do was ignite some sort of passion, so that at an early age, they can discover something that they love and want to do."
Elizabeth Acuff graduated from Villa Madonna High School and is going to Xavier University in the fall. She is in the program, and she said it gives her the chance to explore different fields of medicine.
"I was just talking to another nurse and she was talking about how many other opportunities there are to be in the medical field as a nurse and I didn't really know about a lot of them," she said.
Dr. Latonya Brown-Puryea is the critical care medical director at St. Elizabeth Medical Center and one of the doctors showing students life inside the hospital. She said the program also lets students see how busy a day in the hospital can be.
"Gives (students) an opportunity to kind of decide, is this chaotic world one in which I think I can thrive and someday be successful?" she said.
The program helps students decide whether they want to be in medicine, but it also helps the doctors, too.
"It gives us another booster shot of passion, reminds us why we went into it," Moon said. "It may be a huge benefit to them to be exposed to this, but it also benefits us."
