Students explore careers at MU Health Care's Tomorrow's Health Care Experts Expo

High school students on Friday flooded into Hilton Garden Inn & Conference Center, where University of Missouri Health Care held its first Tomorrow's Healthcare Experts Expo to expose them to healthcare fields.

There is a continuing demand for the jobs, said Nikki Carter, director of Belonging and Community Impact for MU Health Care.

The goal of the expo is to provide exposure to many health care career fields.

Moberly Area Community College and Columbia College also were represented at the expo.

"Exposure is definitely the main goal — planting seeds for the future generation," Carter said.

At one stop, EMTs Paige Kovnesky and Stephen Dunkin assisted Hickman High School junior Jada Eckles to intubate a mannequin.

"It was cool," Jada said after the successful intubation.

She plans to go to school to be a nurse, but she hadn't decided where, she said.

The expo was useful for Hickman junior Alejandro Sheets, he said.

"It's really cool," he said. "It's a great opportunity for students to explore many different areas of healthcare. It can be overwhelming, but if you know what you're looking for, it can be useful."

He knew what he was looking for, he said. His interest is psychology, with a possibility of getting into social work.

Constiance Goff is a senior at Prairie Home, 13 miles southeast of Boonville "in the middle of nowhere," she said.

"It's nice," Constiance said. "I'm getting to learn a lot."

She's more interested in working with animals as a veterinarian, she said.

She stopped by the speech therapy booth, she said because she knows kids at her school who take speech therapy and she wanted to learn more about it.

Outside was MU Health Care's Mobile Simulation lab. Inside EMT Jeremy Tuggle demonstrated how to check vital signs on an interactive child mannequin.

The lab allows medical professionals to encounter simulations involving unusual healthcare circumstances. The mobile lab, which MU Health Care has had for 10 months, will travel around Missouri to rural medical centers as part of a $16 million grant to recruit rural doctors.

There were about 400 high school students at the expo, Carter said.

Roger McKinney is the Tribune's education reporter. You can reach him at rmckinney@columbiatribune.com or 573=815-1719. He's on X at @rmckinney9.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: "Planting seeds for the future generation" a goal of career expo