Shetty hospital welcomes first group of interns

(CNS): Sixteen Caymanian students will be taking part on an inaugural internship programme at the Shetty hospital this summer. Fourteen of the students from high school and university will be focusing on medicine while two students are following a maintenance/building operations and marketing at the facility. Six of the interns started this week and the programmes vary from two weeks to two months. Dr Candy Abraham, Medical and Facility Director at Health City, said the exposure the students gain will assist them in deciding which spheres of medicine they may wish to specialise in.

“We offer our internships to give students a taste of the various areas of the medical fields in which we specialise,” he said. “These include cardiac surgery, cardiology, orthopaedics, pulmonary and paediatric endocrinology. It is a broad spectrum and we are sure the students will enjoy the variety of subject matter we are able to show them.”

Dr Candy said it is Health City’s intention to provide interns with first-hand experience within the hospital to help them make a decision if medicine is a field they would like to pursue further. “Our ultimate goal is to have one third of all medical staff be Caymanian in the coming decade,” he said. “We hope that internships will inspire future careers.”

Gene Thompson, the local partner in the venture with Shetty, said he was delighted to be working with education ministry adding that Mminister Tara Rivers and Winston Connolly, the councillor, have confirmed they will continue to support Health City in its goal of having one hundred interns in the calendar year of 2015.

“We will be working diligently in partnership with the Ministry of Education to see this commitment through,” Thompson said.

Connolly, who visited the hospital with the interns, said the ministry was excited about the inaugural cohort.

“[We] trust that these young Caymanians will seize this opportunity to educate themselves and help form their career decisions. We congratulate Health City for their vision and believe that this will be a mutually beneficial exercise,” the government backbencher stated.