Mayra Dawkins found her calling as a teenage intern at Colorado Children’s Hospital, struck by the bond between doctors and nurses and their young patients.

Now as a urology nurse on staff at Children’s Hospital, she seeks to provide that same sense of connection – with a soft spot for children like her, from Spanish-speaking families, for whom hospitals and practices medical information can seem overwhelming and confusing.

“I see these families and feel like they’re like my family,” said Dawkins, who participated in the hospital system’s Medical Career Collaborative program in 2010 and 2011 while a student at Overland. Aurora High School.

The program – now in its 22nd year – has helped hundreds of young people like Dawkins explore health care careers, including many students of color who grew up speaking Spanish at home and don’t ve never thought a job in healthcare was realistic. option.

Getting more Spanish speakers into Colorado’s hospital rooms has only become more critical over the past 19 months as the pandemic has disproportionately affected the state’s population of more than 1.25 million. Latino residents and highlighted the “gross injustices faced by the Latino-Spanish community,” said Dr. Lilia Cervantes, associate professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus. During the first seven months of the pandemic in Denver, Hispanic residents experienced the most cases, hospitalizations and deaths of any adult, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But Colorado hospitals don’t have to look far to find more people of color to lure into the health care pipeline, she said. With many Latino children more likely to stay long-term in the state their family calls home, Cervantes stresses the need to build the state’s future health care workforce with its own students. That’s the central goal of the Medical Career Collaborative program, which accepts about 40 Denver-area students each year and puts them on the path to learning more about healthcare jobs and ultimately connects them with a paid hospital internship.

The program, launched in 1999, is primarily aimed at attracting students of color and students from low-income homes and helping them launch promising careers in healthcare. Since the program began, more than 90 participants have secured healthcare jobs at Colorado Children’s Hospital – as physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses, clinical assistants, X-ray technologists, scientists lab workers, social workers, respiratory therapists, medical interpreters and in other positions, said Stacey Whiteside, director of experience and engagement at Children’s Hospital Colorado.

“We believe that a workforce that represents the communities we serve will be an even more effective team,” Whiteside said, because diversity helps create better patient outcomes. Families living in poverty or facing housing insecurity, for example, face significant challenges in obtaining regular health care and medication.

A healthcare worker who grew up with the same kinds of struggles better understands the extent of the help he needs, Whiteside said.

“It gives you an idea of ​​what the family in front of you might be going through, and you may be able to tailor your care plan to meet the unique needs of that family,” she said.

Language helps meet patients’ needs and put them at ease, Cervantes said. Spanish-speaking families in need of healthcare often light up when they are greeted by a doctor or nurse who shares their language. It’s something she’s seen when caring for her own patients as they relax, relieved to be able to ask questions and understand what comes next.

“It just provides a sense of comfort and ease…to be able to communicate with your clinician in whatever language you feel most comfortable in,” Cervantes said, especially as patients find themselves in a vulnerable state during their hospitalization.

About 17% of Coloradans speak a language other than English at home, and 11.4% of Coloradans speak Spanish at home, according to estimates from the 2019 US Census American Community Survey. And about a third of those Spanish speakers say they speak less than “very good” English.

The challenges Dawkins experienced accessing quality care as a child in a family whose first language was Spanish stayed with her and motivated her to provide a better experience for her patients.

Dawkins, 28, did not originally see herself working in a hospital, in part because no one in her family had had a career in healthcare and so she grew up without much exposure to opportunity employment. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico, and although her mother earned her GED, her father did not complete high school. After Dawkins’ sophomore science teacher encouraged her to consider the program and apply, the course of her life changed completely, she said. She shifted her focus from wanting to help people as an immigration lawyer to wanting to help patients recover.

As an intern in the program, Dawkins worked on an inpatient unit, shadowing nurses, certified nursing assistants, physicians and other providers. She was blown away by how the staff developed close relationships with their young patients as they cared for them.

“What can be such a scary time for families, you are such a positive part of it,” Dawkins said.

An experience during her internship marked her over the past 10 years. She remembers caring for a red-haired boy with blue eyes – only 2 or 3 at the time – alongside a CNA while his parents were out. Comforting him during “a really stressful time and a really scary time” impacted Dawkins and helped her see the meaningful way she could uplift patients.

She has now worked full-time at Children’s Hospital Colorado for eight years, the last four and a half years in the urology clinic with the goal of becoming a nurse practitioner. She also served as Vice Chair of the Board of the Medical Career Collaborative – which she credits for not only steering her into healthcare, but for continuing to support her as she navigated the world. university and applied for new positions throughout his career.

“I don’t know what I would have done without it, really,” Dawkins said.

Preparing students for college and other post-secondary programs is a key part of the internship, Whiteside said. The Medical Career Collaborative program app mimics a college app so students can practice submitting a transcript, letter of recommendation, and essays within a given time frame. Students entering the second year of the program in their final year receive more intensive support with academic and professional coaching and help with writing and completing college and scholarship applications.

The first year of the program focuses more on educating students about the many areas they can explore. Students embark on field trips, workshops and training, Whiteside said, with tours of the hospital system’s pathology lab, a first aid course and a day spent with emergency medicine professionals. A paid internship rounds out their learning experience, with students placed in hospital departments to shadow clinical staff, stock supplies, prepare rooms for patients, work on data entry, and handle other tasks. beginner level.

As juniors and seniors identify interests to pursue beyond high school, “we want to influence that,” Whiteside said.

She added that the need for a local program focused on developing the next generation of healthcare workers has become more important as many current employees have suffered from burnout during the pandemic.

Ashley Esparza is among the students enrolled in the program this year, interning in the hospital system’s pharmacy department, where she helps dispose of expired medications and stock medication trays for the emergency department. Esparza, a junior at York International School in Thornton, interns for four hours a day on Saturdays and Sundays and attends weekly seminars where she learns about medical terminology, different types of healthcare jobs and how to interact with patients.

The program piqued the 16-year-old’s interest in becoming a pediatrician or pharmacist and showed her how much bilingual students like her are needed in Colorado’s healthcare systems.

“With the language barrier, it makes it harder,” Esparza said, especially when trying to explain medical terminology to a family.

She has already stepped in to help translate. In addition to helping translate words or mail for family members, Esparza took time out to get a COVID-19 shot at a Walgreens store to help a woman who was struggling to take the right medicine. . Esparza left smiling “just happy to know that I helped someone because I knew two languages.”

Introducing more students like Esparza into health care should be a state priority, said Cervantes, of the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus. Cervantes is frustrated that Latino residents of Colorado continue to struggle with quality health care at a time when so many have risked their lives on the front lines for essential jobs.

“I think as a country we need to do better to reduce health inequities, and one way to address disparities is to ensure that our medical workforce reflects the demographics of the patients we serve,” said said Cervantes. “And in Colorado, a particularly vulnerable patient population is the Latino community and especially those with limited English proficiency. We can provide them with better care if we reduce language barriers.