y area of the medical field, one must complete some form of internship. This internship is not only required and appealing on resumes, but it is also very important in helping medical hopefuls to determine what it is they want to do with their career.

The COPE Health Scholars program is an internship program that offers students and other people who are interested in careers in the medical field the opportunity to work in various areas of a hospital with the experience of direct patient care.

“The ability to interact with patients caught my interest because it is very, very rare to be able to do that as an intern,” sophomore Sawyer Weddle, a member of the COPE program, said.

Under this system, students spend four hours a week cycling through different areas of the hospital.

“What we really do is work with nurses and Certified Nursing Assistants on the floor to help with patient satisfaction,” junior Jenna Miles, member of the program, said. “We get trained to be able to go in to take vital, bathing, changing, feeding, pretty much just assisting patients and helping CNAs to just keep the floor moving.”

This program puts interns in the middle of everything, and allows them to observe and explore what careers they may be interested in.

“It’s a huge eye-opener, and really sealed the deal of what I want to do,” junior Taylor Messick, department coordinator and intern under the program, said.

The internship’s hands-on experience is very unique, and is what separates it from other medical internship programs.

“The selection process is very competitive because of the opportunity to even be able to touch patients without some sort of medical license or certification,” Weddle said.

The application and selection process for the Health Scholars program is a thorough process.

“You apply online through a general application that requires general information as well as a few supplementary essay questions. Once you submit that, if you are selected, you go through an interview process, which is followed by a three-day training process.  Then finally on the last day, you are tested with a written exam and a practical exam,” Miles said. “If you score an 80 or higher on both tests, you’re in. If not, you have to resubmit and restart the process again.”

Although the application process sounds rigorous and extensive, California Lutheran University students have had great success in being accepted into the program.

“About 20 out of the 45 interns are Cal Lutheran students,” Messick said.

This significant number of students can be attributed to the Health Scholars program being widely marketed to students around Cal Lutheran’s campus.

“Students who have been a part of it before are always talking about it, plus they’re frequently setting up information tables around campus and going in and talking in classrooms to spread the word,” Miles said.

Although the program is mostly advertised to science students, this program is open to anyone.

“You don’t have to be a biology or any type of science major to do this internship. It’s a great experience to help decide what career you want to go into,” Messick said.

The next application due date for the COPE Health Scholars internship program is Feb. 28.

“The program is only growing, it’s only getting more popular and more well known,” Messick said. “People want to know about the Health Scholar program.”

Evan Underwood
Staff Writer
Published February 24th, 2016