High school students explore future careers at UC Davis Health

“Wait —  these are actual patients?”

A group of high school students paused for a moment inside UC Davis Health’s cardiac rehabilitation gym, expecting something quiet and clinical. Instead, patients pedaled stationary bikes while chatting with nurses, laughing with one another and joking between exercises.

“I always picture hospitals as super serious,” one student said later. “But people were actually hanging out and having fun.”

Nearby, heart monitors blinked steadily while care teams coached patients through workouts and recovery plans. Several students lingered longer than the tour schedule allowed, asking questions about nutrition, exercise and how cardiac rehabilitation works.

For many of the students visiting UC Davis Health, moments like that reshaped what they thought a hospital looked and felt like.

A hospital through new eyes

More than 100 juniors and seniors from Cosumnes Oaks High School’s medical careers pathway program spent the day touring UC Davis Health clinics, hospital units and support departments as part of a growing partnership between UC Davis Health and the Elk Grove Unified School District.

The students split into 10 groups and rotated through departments, including cardiology, oncology, neurology, dialysis, emergency medicine and internal medicine. Last year’s event hosted about 50 students. This year, participation more than doubled.

As buses unloaded near the hospital entrance that morning, students piled out wearing matching shirts and carrying worksheets filled with pre-printed questions for staff.

Darrell Desmond, assistant nurse manager and one of the day’s organizers, told students the goal was not only to show them hospital departments, but to help them picture themselves working in spaces like these one day. 

Inside the hospital, many quickly abandoned the quiet, careful demeanor they arrived with, moving beyond their prepared worksheets as they asked questions.. 

Some crowded around medication dispensing systems and supply rooms. Others peppered nurses with questions about shift schedules, school requirements and whether artificial intelligence might eventually replace parts of medicine.

Jacob Kim, a high school senior who hopes to become a pediatrician, said the experience gave him his first real look inside a hospital environment.

“I’ve never actually seen a hospital behind the scenes before,” he said. “It was interesting because this is probably what I’m going to be around for a long time in my life. All the nurses we met were so friendly and it really made me feel at home.”

More than doctors and nurses

Throughout the day, UC Davis Health employees emphasized that modern health care systems rely on far more than physicians alone.

Students met nurses, pharmacists, managers, technicians and administrative staff while learning how departments across the organization work together to support patient care.

Gregory Woods, assistant nurse manager and one of the organizers of the event, encouraged students to think broadly about what a future in health care might look like. While presenting to students during lunch, Woods shared stories about growing up between Indiana and rural Mississippi, where summers doing manual labor helped motivate him to pursue higher education after struggling early in a college engineering program. 

His message to students focused less on perfect career planning and more on resilience — emphasizing that setbacks, detours and changing directions are often part of finding a meaningful career path.

Students also heard from Lyndon Huling, director of Talent Acquisition at UC Davis Health, who explained that health care systems need employees with a wide range of interests and skill sets, as they can’t function with clinical workers alone. From writers and recruiters to food service workers and IT teams, he said nearly every passion or specialty has a place within a hospital system. 

Watching the program grow

“We started with about 60 students, and now we have about 400,” one program leader said during the event.

That growth was on display in another way as well. Among the volunteers was Sunsaara Shergill, a graduate of the program’s first cohort who recently completed her undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley and will begin medical school this year.

Now mentoring students who are navigating many of the same questions she once faced, Shergill hopes the experience helps them see health care careers as attainable.

“I think sometimes students doubt whether they belong in spaces like this,” she said. “Seeing people with similar backgrounds helps make it feel possible.”

Ending the day

For assistant nurse manager Gregory Woods, the goal of the day was simple: help students picture themselves in the future of health care.

By the afternoon, many of the students who had arrived quietly that morning were comparing favorite departments, replaying moments from the tour, and chatting about career paths.

“You guys are our future in health care,” Woods told the students earlier that morning. “One day, you’re going to be taking care of us.”