Achievement Awards Spotlight Reading Hospital

August 16, 2024

HAP's annual Achievement Awards honor hospitals and health systems for their innovation, creativity, and commitment to patient care. The Achievement Awards showcase and share member hospitals’ and health systems’ successful programs and best practices.

This year, Reading Hospital received the Workforce Innovators Award for its project to expand the pipeline of young students interested in health care careers.

Here’s what you need to know:

• The challenge:  Hospitals and the health care sector continue to face staffing shortages, and the COVID-19 pandemic only intensified these challenges.
• Taking action:  To address the staffing shortage and grow the future workforce, Reading Hospital created a high school internship program. The initiative offers opportunities “to enhance students’ academic, professional, and personal development through hands-on experiences that allow them to apply and develop their knowledge and skills in real life situations.”
  • The initiative continues to grow with participation from school districts across the county.
• Hands-on experience:  The program for high school seniors offers real-world experiences that cover a broad range, including cleaning and disinfecting stations and patient rooms, restocking carts and storage spaces, assisting staff with retrieving supplies, transporting patients, answering phones, greeting patients and guests, scanning charts, and data entry.
  • Interns also can observe staff delivering care to patients and participate in twice-monthly workshops to grow their skillsets.
• Strong results:  The program has grown from seven students and one school district to 29 students from 12 schools last year. Next year's class is likely to be the largest to date, with up to 50 students selected to participate.
  • Additionally, 31.8 percent of students have remained engaged with the hospital after graduation through job shadowing, college internship programs, or by gaining employment.
• Quotable:  “It is important that all students feel welcome and that they have a voice both within the internship program and at the hospital in general. While the interns may be high school students, they are treated as equals and professionals from the start of their involvement with the program,” the team noted in its entry.

Congratulations to Reading Hospital for its outstanding efforts to grow the health care pipeline. Learn more about the project online.

Questions about the HAP Achievement Awards may be directed to HAP Member Services at (717) 561-5359.