After preparing all year and working towards their goals, the Health Occupation Students of America club, commonly called HOSA, will be heading to their spring leadership conference on April 7-9. During the conference, members will show all that they have learned throughout the year. 

HOSA is a club designed to prepare students and show them what a career in the medical field will be like. It gives them time to understand the medical field, to look at other options and to decide whether a health career is something they want. 

HOSA started three years ago because of students who pushed for it to be made. They wanted to create the club and asked the current HOSA advisor and science teacher, Doug Long, to be the advisor. 

“I’ve heard about HOSA and we were looking for a way to try and get it going but I just never really pushed the button. Then a student asked me about it and I said ‘Yeah, let’s go ahead and do it,’” Long said. 

Ever since, students have joined the club and learned. They have worked towards their goals through the conferences and the prep they have to do for each of them. There are three conferences in total: the fall leadership conference, the midwinter leadership conference and the spring leadership conference. 

Long said the fall conference is where all of the state hosts and members in HOSA meet. It is a kickoff to the HOSA season and they explain the events for the season so students can start practicing. HOSA went there this year and they “started identifying what they wanted to do and they started practicing.”

Between the fall, midwinter and spring conferences, students are given time to practice their chosen events. Each student picks five certain events to participate in. They pick them and practice them throughout the year and in the conferences. All of the practice is there to prepare them for the spring leadership conference, in which students compete with others from all around the state. 

“The kids have signed up for a competitive event in a certain field. The spring leadership conference has, I think, 86 different events that kids could sign up for. In performing these competitive events, they get a chance to practice skills that they’ll need to get a job down the road,” Long said. 

The events are all different, focusing on a unique part of the healthcare field. They are all more general skills that are helpful for any healthcare employee to learn. Some of them include medical assisting, sports medicine, forensic science and medical terminology. 

Sophomore Sifan Hassen will be doing medical assisting for the spring conference. She thinks the job sounds interesting and she is familiar with it as she has seen people do and demonstrate it in the doctor’s office. 

When it comes to the practice, it differs. Each event requires certain skills to be performed and known to be prepared for the event during the conference, which makes everyone’s practice a bit different from each other.

Hassen said to prepare for the spring leadership conference, she has printed a lot of papers on medical assisting and will continue to use the papers she used to prepare for the midwinter leadership conference. She will also study “more in depth things like terms they might say.”

There are some other competitions, as well. They are separate from the main list, but help members learn much more and test themselves. One of them is the anatomage competition.

“There is the anatomage competition and its separate. The anatomage is this big table and it has a tablet and a dead person on it. And it’s all the muscles and basically an anatomy competition where you label which is which. Last year, I think that our team got fourth place, we got $25,” Monique Micallef, senior and a captain of HOSA, said. 

In addition to HOSA, there are many opportunities for future healthcare employees. There are some classes that HOSA members have taken to expand their knowledge and interest in healthcare. These classes teach skills that are useful to everyone. 

“I took CIS Anatomy and Physiology last year with Mr. Long. I took AP Chem last year and I’m taking AP Bio this year. So just science classes,” Micallef said.

HOSA is a wonderful option for all students, especially ones who are interested in a health career. Their spring conference is coming up on April 7-9 and in it they shall take part in their events and reach towards their goals.