Health care careers await. KU is equipping counselors to ensure high schoolers know their options.

Heather Henning, a college counselor at Notre Dame de Sion High School in Kansas City, Missouri, has a lot of students ask her about careers in health care.

“They’re interested in it — but they don’t know exactly which path to take,” Henning said.

That was a key theme at University of Kansas Counselor Day, which recently drew about 50 high school and community college counselors to KU Medical Center to learn about KU’s many health care programs and how students should prepare for them.

Another theme of the day: For students who like science and want to help people, there’s a place for them in health care — whether they want to interact directly with patients or work behind the scenes instead.

Nursing is popular at Kansas City Kansas Community College, and the school has a partnership with KU School of Nursing, said Anissa Martinez, the college’s assistant director of student success and retention.

However, Martinez was excited to learn about additional fields that also are growing and in need of graduates, such as clinical laboratory science and health information management and informatics.

“Our students don’t know what they don’t know,” Martinez said. “There are folks that are interested, so (my goal is) just making sure they know there are these opportunities available to them.”

To emphasize, KU School of Health Professions recruiter Alex Lopez asked counselors if they’d met a doctor, nurse or pharmacist. Attendees all raised hands.

“What about a clinical laboratory scientist?” he asked next, and only a few hands went up.

Lopez explained that this profession — which requires only a bachelor’s degree at the entry level and will have over 22,000 job openings per year, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projections — analyzes patient samples and reports findings to health care providers. “Without clinical laboratory scientists, doctors, nurses, none of these people could do their jobs.”

KU Counselor Day previously has been held at the university’s main campus in Lawrence. This year, the event focused specifically on health care.

Counselors came primarily from across Kansas and the Kansas City metropolitan area. They toured the campus, including hands-on experience in KU’s nursing lab with its high-tech patient mannequins and other interactive learning tools.

Creating a health care graduate is a One KU effort, and representatives from KU’s Lawrence, Edwards and medical center campuses all presented.

Several health care programs are offered in Lawrence, including pharmacy and a new major in nutrition launching this fall. A number of programs require two years in Lawrence then two years at the medical center, such as nursing and health information management. Other programs require advanced degrees available only at the medical center, such as medicine, physical therapy and genetic counseling.

Counselors Janella Newton, of Lebo and Waverly high schools, and Lisa Reeser, of Marais de Cygnes Valley High School, agreed that health care opportunities are always changing and counselors need to keep up.

“There’s a lot of health care programs and a lot of things to learn,” said Newton, who added that she’d decided to bring a group of her students to visit the medical center campus soon. “These are very informative.”

Reeser said the KU event provided resources for counselors to help their students begin planning their college paths early. She said many students don’t realize, for example, that physical therapists need a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate.

Counselors also got to quiz a panel of KU students pursuing degrees in medicine, nursing, pharmacy, biotechnology, respiratory therapy and health informatics.

Isabelle Berutti is a senior in KU’s health information management bachelor’s program and concurrently pursuing a master’s degree in health informatics.

Berutti said she only heard about health informatics because a friend’s father worked in the field. Fortunately, that was just in time for her to research universities that offered the program and choose KU.

“Giving your students the information prior to even looking for colleges, that’s something that I really wish I had,” she said. “It will prepare them for what they truly want to do.”