SIH Interns Gain Valuable Experience

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." -Dr. Seuss

We are all familiar with the crisis level shortage of healthcare workers across the United States. This reality can especially be felt in rural America. We are excited to announce that SIH has become a leader in creating innovative solutions to keep the best local talent from our region working here in southern Illinois and taking care of you.

In addition to her busy surgical practice, Dr. Kelli Webb was recently honored to be named SIH Medical Director of Student Experiences. Under her leadership, our system has focused on various student opportunities including scholarships, student rotations, career development strategies, and now student employment.

The new SIH Healthcare Internship program provides our local students a semester-long commitment of part time student employment working in our clinics. They are doing tasks such as rooming patients, checking patients in and out of clinic, stocking rooms, etc. This mutually beneficial program has brought a new source of bright, motivated healthcare employees and also provided the students valuable real-world experience working in various medical clinics.

The inaugural class of 15 interns has been working for several weeks, and the feedback has been outstanding! Here's what a couple of our interns have to say.

“I am already telling other students how much of a blessing it is to have this internship opportunity. Every time I walk through the clinic (and sometimes in my case walking through the hospital to the cafeteria) with my badge on and my scrubs freshly cleaned, I just get this warm feeling that I can't believe I got this. This is such a great opportunity. I am so glad that I applied for it," said Kennedie Marks, senior at SIUC from Cobden majoring in Physiology.

"In the month that I have been working, I have developed many skills that I think are important to have before going to med school, PA school, nursing school, etc. I think the internship gives us an opportunity to learn bedside manner and how to interact with patients, as well as skills such as taking blood pressure, and what numbers and levels are considered concerning for a patient,." said Sophia Aaflaq, junior at SIUC from Carbondale, pre-med majoring in Biological Sciences.

Our goal next semester is to expand this opportunity to additionally include students from our local junior colleges. If you or anyone you know is interested in applying, the spring semester internship application will go online in November. You will be able to find it here.