Published April 2003

Skills center ‘first rung’
on training ladder

Snohomish County Business Journal/ KIMBERLY HILDEN Christina Madrid, a senior at Granite Falls High School, gets her vital signs checked by Cascade High School junior Phuong Nguyen (left) and Marysville-Pilchuck High School junior Dude Germano during their nursing assistant class at Sno-Isle Skills Center.

By Kimberly Hilden
SCBJ Assistant Editor

At the Sno-Isle Skills Center in south Everett, health-care workers of tomorrow are learning the skills they need today — even before they’ve earned their high school diploma.

The center, a cooperative effort among 14 local school districts, prepares juniors and seniors for entry-level jobs or related post-secondary training in one of 23 occupations by combining classroom learning with hands-on training.

Included in the center’s array of occupational options are medical assisting, nursing assistant and dental assisting — careers that are in high demand across the region, Sno-Isle officials say.

“There is a shortage in health-care personnel ... and we are the first rung, or training mechanism, for health care,” Sno-Isle Director Steve Burch said, fingering a copy of “Health Care Workforce Shortage: Crisis or Opportunity?,” a report recently released by a state health-care task force (see related article).

Through the center’s medical assisting program, first-year students can earn up to 20 credits from Everett Community College and returning seniors can earn an additional 15 credits while they train to become medical assistants in the front or back office of a health-care facility, instructor Debi Freal said.

Medical terminology, instrument identification, correspondence, keyboarding and clinical skills such as taking vital signs, vision screening and analyzing body mass are among the subjects taught.

In mid-April, first-year students begin six weeks of interning at area medical facilities, including Providence Everett Medical Center and its Medalia Medical Group, The Everett Clinic, HealthForce Partners, Valley General Hospital, Cascade Regional Eye Center and PacMed. There, they put their skills to work for 10 hours each week, Freal said, noting that students prepare a resume, portfolio and list of references as part of the class.

Those who return in their senior year for an optional second year of medical assisting spend one day a week at the skills center for instruction on medical ethics, medical diseases and conditions, and Microsoft Word applications. The rest of their week is spent working at an area health-care facility, where they are paid at industry level, said Freal, a certified medical assistant who works closely with EvCC’s medical assisting program to keep tabs on the industry.

“There’s a really big need out there,” she said. “They’re having a hard time filling positions for medical assistants, radiology and imaging (technicians).”

While some of the students take the class to become medical assistants, many see the program as a stepping stone.

“I have some who are hired (right after graduation). Quite a few want to go beyond that,” Freal said, noting that many take the course on their way to becoming a doctor or a radiologist.

It’s the same for Suzanne Lamantia, instructor of the nursing assistant program at Sno-Isle. Last year, at least half of her students applied to EvCC to continue their education after earning 10 college credits through the skill center’s nursing assistant program, which leads to state certification as a nursing assistant.

“Nursing assistants are needed seven days a week, 24 hours a day,” Lamantia said, noting their use in retirement communities, hospitals and medical clinics.

In her program, students spend the first three to four months in the classroom learning basic skills for patient care, communication skills, basic anatomy and physiology, disease recognition and prevention, and first aid and CPR.

In January, after months of practicing on one another, students head to a local retirement home to offer their services to the residents there — “that’s where the real learning occurs, is on the job,” Lamantia said.

In April, students take the state nursing assistant certification test, which usually ends in a 100 percent pass rate, Lamantia said, followed by 40 hours of job shadowing at a local health-care facility.

“They have to go out and present themselves in a professional manner — it’s great practice,” she said.

Students taking Sno-Isle’s dental assisting program receive hands-on practice of their own at the center’s on-site dental clinic, which opens each year in early November — after students have had time to learn dental terminology, sterilization and disinfecting procedures, safety standards and other related skills, instructor Lisa Caldwell said.

Through their work in the clinic, which serves clients of the state Department of Social and Health Services as well as low-income clientele, students get 100 hours of hands-on experience, working with dentists on staff as well as Caldwell and fellow instructor Denise Perkins, both of who are dental assistants.

Like all the programs offered at Sno-Isle, student demand for the health-care programs is high, and even though the dental assisting program expanded to two sections this year to train 80 students, there was room for only half of those who applied.

The same holds true for the medical and nursing programs, which each accept 40 applicants a year.

“Most of our programs have waiting lists,” Burch said, noting that the center attracts 1,800 student applicants annually and is only able to serve 1,000 of those students.

Until this year, the center also held a free 15-day summer school, offering more than 700 students a chance to see what the center offered — and what occupations might be of interest to them. But funding for that program has been cut in the face of state budget tightening, Burch said.

Part of the state’s K-12 education system, Sno-Isle shares state funding with the high schools that feed into it, as students spend a portion of their school day at the skills center and the remainder at their high school. For each student the skills center serves, it receives six-tenths of the state funding for that student, while the sending high school receives the remaining four-tenths.

“We can’t do a special levy, like other schools can,” Burch said, though the center, which is administered through Mukilteo School District No. 6, does assess sending schools a certain amount of money — an amount that has decreased as those schools face their own budget crunch.

Despite funding reduction, Burch and the rest of the Sno-Isle staff remain focused on providing quality education and training that will benefit both the students and the industries they enter.

“The programs are appreciated by the health-care industry, with many of the students being hired directly once they complete the program or working part-time (in that field) as they go to college or community college,” he said.

And the center’s students are learning that they “have a future,” Lamantia added.

Related article: Health-care personnel shortage hits state, county

Related article: Regional radiology program gets federal funding

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