From high school to the hospital: IWCS health care programs mean immediate job prospects
Published 7:32 pm Friday, April 25, 2025
From left, IWCS Instructional Coordinator Natalie Street, Director of Elementary Education Tracy Stith-Johnson, Smithfield High School Principal Patricia Cuffee, Director of Secondary Education Lori White, School Board member Michael Cunningham, School Board Chairman Jason Maresh, Superintendent Theo Cramer, Christina Brooks representing the Hampton Roads Workforce Council and Claude Moore Charitable Foundation, Deputy Superintendent Susan Goetz, New Horizons Regional Education Centers Executive Director Marsha Cale, Michael Hamilton of Riverside College, patient care technician instructor Judy Carter, nurse aide instructor Jessica Futrell, and patient care technician student Gage Collette, cut the ribbon celebrating the start of Isle of Wight County Schools patient care technician certification program. (Photos by Stephen Faleski | The Smithfield Times)
Students Kirsten Price, at left, and Jensen Peters, practice drawing blood using a mannequin’s arm.
From left, students Melanie Spainhower, Lilah Foster, Kaytlin Galle-Bishop, Jensen Peters and Gage Collette receive their patient care technician certifications. Not pictured is Alyvia Cheeley, who also passed her patient care technician certification exam. 1657 - Mannequins occupy a cot and hospital bed in the corner of the patient care technician classroom.
Mannequins occupy a cot and hospital bed in the corner of the patient care technician classroom.
There’s no mistaking the entrance to the patient care technician classroom, which has been elaborately designed.
The classroom that now houses Isle of Wight County Schools Patient Care Technician program was only a year ago a windowless cinderblock storage space at the end of a hallway in the outbuilding that houses Smithfield High School’s student-run “Turner & 10” restaurant and other career and technical education classes.
A three-year, $200,000 joint grant from the Hampton Roads Workforce Council and the Claude Moore Charitable Foundation that introduces Virginia high school students to health care careers has funded the room’s transformation.
The space now includes hospital beds with mannequins, intravenous bags suspended from metal poles, and a south-facing window where just under a mile behind the tree line and Red Oak mobile home park is the 50-bed Riverside Smithfield Hospital set to open in early 2026.
Though a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held April 25, the new patient care technician course has been operating since the start of the semester in January. Its six inaugural students have already taken and passed their National HealthCareer Association certification as patient care technicians. Nurse Judy Carter, who teaches the program, said her students exceeded the national average score by 13 points, and one has already gone on a job interview.
But the training is far from over. Carter has set her students the goal of completing not one but three separate certifications by the end of the semester. By the time they graduate, they’ll also be certified as electrocardiogram, or EKG, technicians and as phlebotomists.
“You learn so much so fast,” said Gage Collette, a senior who began his foray into the field by completing the certified nurse aide career and technical education program during his junior year.
The nurse aide program, which Carter formerly taught and is now taught by Jessica Futrell, is housed next door and connected to the new patient care technician space, providing a literal as well as an academic pathway for students to continue their medical training.
To be a certified EKG technician, students must not only pass the certification exam but also perform 10 actual EKGs. For phlebotomy certification, students must pass the test and complete 30 vein sticks and 10 finger sticks.
They’ve been traveling to and from Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News and the Smithfield Family Medical office to complete the practical experience requirements.
“I always wanted to pursue health care,” said Collette, who outside of school is separately pursuing certification as an emergency medical technician.
The new patient care technician program provides a pathway for students to be “industry certified” and “immediately employable,” IWCS Superintendent Theo Cramer said.
Completing the certifications means students will be qualified to enter a high-paying career immediately after high school. Phlebotomists had a median annual wage of $43,660 in May 2024 according to the U.S. Occupational Outlook Handbook.
School Board Chairman Jason Maresh, at the ribbon-cutting, urged students to “take every opportunity” afforded to them while in high school, noting his own high school offered very limited vocational opportunities.
It’s the latest addition to Isle of Wight’s growing lineup of career and technical education options, the first of which began in 2017 when IWCS ended its partnership with Suffolk’s P.D. Pruden Vocational Center and brought its course offerings back in house. Other courses include agriculture, building trades, cosmetology, culinary arts, early childhood education and welding. Students from Smithfield and Windsor high schools are eligible to enroll in any program regardless of which school houses it.
Smithfield houses most programs except for building trades, which is housed at Windsor High, the student-run agriculture land lab behind Windsor Elementary and early childhood education, which pairs high school students with preschoolers enrolled in the Little Sprouts program at its elementary schools.
