Okanagan College needs your help to train the next generation of health professionals

• Under a million dollars needed
• New facility training next generation of professionals

Back in October, Okanagan College unveiled a brand-new Health Sciences Centre, worth $19.4 million.

Now, the college has turned to the community to help raise the remaining $750,000 to reach its $5 million fundraising goal.

Our Students Your Health Campaign Ambassador Maxine DeHart told Kelowna10 the students who come out of these programs will focus in all areas of healthcare.

“They could be helping you with physiotherapy. They could be helping in the pharmacy,” DeHart said. “Anyone coming to a state-of-the-art facility, will be here a few years, and they’ll probably make their home in Kelowna, and we’re hoping they’ll stay and work here.”

While touring the facilities, DeHart said she was blown away by the students’ enthusiasm to be in the classroom.

“They want to be in this facility, and they want to be a healthcare professional,” she said. “We should be very proud and very lucky to have that.”

Students in eight critical health professional programs will study in the new building, such as early childhood education, nursing, health care assistant, and pharmacy technicians.

Okanagan College Foundation Executive Director, Helen Jackman, said with the need for health care workers on the rise, a facility like this is critical.

“Even pre-pandemic, the frontline health care professionals that we’re educating here were in critical demand,” she said. “That’s only been exacerbated by the pandemic and the stress that those frontline professionals are going through. The fact we can train and educate some incredible talent that will stay and work in this region is important for our community.”

The facility was designed around the specialty of each program to recreate different scenarios that will be dealt with on the front line.

“We’ve tried in our labs to really make it a real-life environment for our students, so they get that comfort level prior to going out into clinical practice,” Yvonne Moritz, Dean of Health and Social Development said. “They can use their skills and practice them right here.”

Moritz said when COVID-19. started they couldn’t have in class learning and were forced to learn in simulated labs. Since opening in January, the students were able to get back to in-person learning.

“Because we have so much space, we were able to do more physically distant labs and as times go on. Students wear masks and PPE as they would in a healthcare,” she said. “They were the first real group of all our students at the college to be back full time into the labs and this building allowed us to do that because we had the space and opportunity.”

The public is encouraged to request a private tour of the Health Sciences Centre or donate online.