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Sentara Obici Hospital hosted students from Franklin City Public Schools to showcase how the hospital provides high quality care for its patients.

Franklin students currently enrolled in the J.P. King Career and Technical Academy took a tour of Sentara Obici on Thursday, Oct. 17 taking a look at various healthcare career opportunities to explore after graduating from high school. Students were presented with different hospital departments during the tour, such as the operating room, central sterile and radiology, among others. Students also were able to view hospital daily operations while taking a look at the different tools healthcare professionals use during their procedures.

During a lunch break, Sentara Obici Nursing Professional Development Specialist Mary Jones had a chance to talk about the program.

“We do the summer program for a whole week, so this is special to just do a day, and this time it’s actually just with the Franklin school system versus Suffolk that we had been accustomed to,” Jones said.

Jones said it was great to have the students learn about the hospital.

“Because we currently hope that we’ll have new healthcare workers in our future,” Jones said. “Because these are 15 and 16-year-olds, so they got a few years yet to think about which one of these opportunities we’re showing them today is just a good fit for them.”

On what she hopes the students will take away from the program, Jones says she hopes they learn that it takes a team to make everything happen at Sentara Obici.

“It’s kind of like, we talk about taking a village to take care of a child, it takes us all – from the person that comes in the front door that greets you to the person that brings your supper, your lunch, to the nurse, the doctor…” she said. “So it takes us all, depending on what your needs are, and we hope we can meet them as a group, as a team and hopefully you’ll have quality healthcare when you leave.”

For more information about Sentara Obici, go to sentara.com/hospitalslocations/sentara-obici-hospital.