From legal teams to HVAC specialists, chefs to information technology experts and beyond, the career opportunities at Reading Hospital: Tower Health are vast and varied, mirroring the diverse community it serves.
“Our CEO says it all the time: the hospital is a city within a city. If you are interested in a career, you could work at the hospital,” says Director of Community Wellness at Reading Hospital, Courtney Powers. “It's not limited to the typical roles that you think about when you think of a hospital: nurses and doctors. They’re very important roles, but there's so much more to the hospital.”
The Tower Health Pathways Program began as the High School Internship Program in 2013. The very first cohort consisted of six high school seniors.
“There was a population of people in Berks County that didn't see themselves working at the hospital,” says Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Community Wellness at Reading Hospital, Desha Dickson, who started the program.
“I thought this would be a great way to dispel the notion that you can only pursue one type of career path to have a fruitful career at Reading Hospital and to show that anybody of any walk of life could work here.”
Since its inception, the program has evolved into a comprehensive pathway for both high school and college students. Its success and high demand, as well as the program leaders’ receptiveness to students’ feedback, led to its expansion to include job shadowing and additional internship opportunities.
“We want to make sure that we provide them with an experience that really aligns with what they hope to get out of it, and a really important piece of that is that this is not a stagnant program,” says Powers. “It's not going to look the same way this coming year as it did this year because we are constantly asking the students, schools and our preceptors who are working with the students every day for feedback so that we can make intentional changes. Feedback is critical to the program’s success.”
Since starting the program, Dickson shares that it has held a special place in her heart. She’s witnessed students have transformational life experiences, including two interns in the program who both became nurses and are married with their own children now.
“It really changes the trajectory of their life, and it isn't just us because they had to put in the work. They had to apply. They had to show up and stay in contact. It's not a huge investment for us in terms of money, but the return on it is a student who may not have even thought about going to college or pursuing a career in healthcare. They come to intern, go to college, and then they get a job that pays a living wage. They have a career.”
The main differences between the different pillars of the program are the application cycles, the time commitments and the education level of the student. However, the programs can build upon each other, and they all have a team ready to provide the students with the best experience possible.
“It really changes the trajectory of their life, and it isn't just us because they had to put in the work.”
Photo Courtesy Reading Hospital
“The staff spends a lot of time trying to make sure that their experience is at the center of everything that we do, and I hope that [the students] feel that,” says Dickson. “The purpose is to make sure that it feels personalized and intentional and that they walk away from it with relevant experience and feeling like someone cared about them from application to onboarding to placement to the end-of-year celebration and beyond.”
Fun Facts
Start Your Own Journey.
Visit bewellberks.org for application criteria, documents and more information about the program and to find which track is right for you or someone you know.
The Next Generation.
Tower Health has plans to expand the program to elementary and middle school students and to bring back some K-8 programming that was halted due to COVID.
