Career-minded Middle Schoolers Meet Nursing Leadership and CEO during Louisville Visit

Amid a nationwide shortage of nurses that shows no sign of easing, it’s never too early to spark young minds into thinking of a nursing career.

That’s why Humana’s Nursing Advisory Council invited a group of Louisville students from the Grace James Academy of Excellence – an Afrocentric middle school that offers girls a curriculum heavy on science and math – to attend part of this year’s spring summit. Twenty students with an interest in health care met with Chief Nursing Officer Kathy Driscoll and council leaders at the Humana Building on May 17, learning about the history of nursing, discussing nursing as a possible career, hearing nurses tell their stories and getting some hands-on time with basic tools of the trade such as blood pressure monitors, stethoscopes and thermometers.

Nurses are in high demand across all sectors of health care, including home health, an area growing in popularity but often overlooked by prospective nurses. Humana employs approximately 10,000 nurses, but plans to hire many more in the years ahead. Many of the available positions will be in the CenterWell family of brands, Humana’s growing healthcare services segment, which includes home health, senior-focused primary care and pharmacy services. Sparking interest in nursing not only helps young people begin to focus on a rewarding career choice, but it might also help the company develop and attract prospective hires down the road.

“There’s a shortage in every practice area and there’s an aging population. We’ll only need more nurses,” Driscoll said. “We’re really thinking about, how do we build pipelines for the future, and what do folks that are in these pipelines need to support them? You can’t just look at people who have already chosen this career; we need to look back a lot further.”

Madison Victor, one of the students who took part in the event, said she liked learning how to use equipment to monitor blood pressure, heartbeat and temperature. “I really like to help people,” she said, adding that she’s considering several possible careers in health care—labor and delivery nurse, pediatric oncologist or orthodontist. “I think It’s been really cool that we got to experience this,” she said.

Toward the end of the visit, Humana CEO Bruce Broussard dropped in to say hello and affirm the importance of nursing, noting that his wife is a nurse and explaining that nurses have more career options than one might think—including administrative and leadership roles.

Driscoll said she’s looking to hold similar networking events with young people in other locations. “This is the first time that we’ve done this with this age student,” she said. “We’re hoping we can take what we learned and replicate it elsewhere, almost like a ‘meeting in a box.’ Our nurse ambassadors and Nursing Advisory Council members all over the country can work with schools in their communities and start to make connections. This is the age that you start thinking about what you want to do. And we want to inspire them.”

Learn more about our clinical careers and how nurses make a difference in the lives of our members and patients at Careers.Humana.com.