Max Hernandez is part of the Best BuddiesProject SEARCH program at UC Davis Health. The nine-month internship for young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities combines classroom instruction with hands-on experience in a hospital setting.
Interns spend part of their day learning how to search for jobs, complete applications and prepare for interviews. They also build everyday workplace skills, including communication, organization and time management. The rest of the day they applying those skills across different departments.
Hernandez has spent several months developing an understanding of how different parts of the hospital operate and how his role contributes to that work.
Gaining experience across roles
Hernandez in the classroom with Project SEARCH Program Supervisor, Michelle Gentry
Hernandez is now on his third rotation. He has spent time with Patient Transport, Radiology, and Guest Relations, and has built skills that go beyond any single task.
Hernandez says the experience is helping him develop the skills and habits needed to succeed at work.
“You need to practice on your awareness, timing and proper organization,” he said.
Project SEARCH Program Supervisor, Michelle Gentry sees those skills show up in everyday moments. Examples include Hernandez learning how to navigate a busy hospital entrance, communicate with patients and staff and adjust to the pace of a new environment.
“He’s very focused, conscientious and mindful of everything going on around him,” Gentry said. “He takes the internship really seriously.”
Real experience, real support
Project SEARCH is designed to prepare participants for employment by placing them in real workplace environments. The experience is structured, but the expectations are the same as any other role in the hospital.
At UC Davis Health, the program continues to grow, supported by departments across the organization and delivered in partnership with Best Buddies International.
“For people with a disability, it is very important to be in the real world and have that real experience,” said Hernandez’s mother, Maribel Hernandez, a community outreach specialist at the UC Davis MIND Institute’sCenter for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. “That’s what this program is doing.”
Looking ahead
Hernandez sketching at home
For Max Hernandez, the internship is one step toward a longer-term goal.
“What I hope to do in the future is get a job to pay off my college funds,” he said. “My main goal is to become an art teacher.”
The work he is doing now with Project SEARCH is already helping that path take shape — one rotation, one skill and one day at a time.
