Nearly 60 of Tulsa's brightest young minds spent the summer months in 2025 shadowing the staff at Hillcrest Medical Center (HMC), and one of those volunteers is about to begin her journey toward becoming a nurse! Student volunteer Natalee King spoke to KJRH about how her time at HMC has shaped her future. Click here to view the story online.
Summer programs are quickly coming to an end, but for some students, the lessons they learned will give them a head start in their college careers.
Hillcrest Medical Center's Junior Volunteer program takes high school students and gives them hands-on experiences in hospitals.
The students shadow nurses and other medical professionals, as well as getting to interact with patients and their families.
This is all to inspire more students to try careers in the medical field.
As some hospitals still face nursing and staffing shortages, this program opens doors to find a specialty within a hospital.
Natalee King recently graduated from Owasso High School and envisions a career in nursing.
She said that while her dad thought she'd become a veterinarian, she had other plans.
"But thinking about vet school and things like that kind of put me onto nursing. And I originally thought about NICU nursing, and then I thought about other things, but eventually settled on NICU nursing," said King.
Now, as she prepares to go into her freshman year at Oklahoma State University, her path to the NICU was reinforced.
The other volunteers shared similar stories. Some said they loved pharmacy, others were drawn to physical therapy.
While this program is over for the summer of 2025, Hillcrest recommends high schoolers start thinking about it ahead of next summer.
This story was written by KJRH's Braden Bates. You can view the full story online here.