NEW CASTLE — Matt Carter wore dark glasses and earbuds blaring loud music as he entered the New Castle Career Center lab, where his classmates waited.
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The Eastern Hancock High School senior wasn’t some rebel late for class; he was participating in an exercise to teach him and his fellow students about a disorder they encounter in their on-the-job training.
Light was low in the lab and spots were drawn on Carter’s glasses to simulate macular degeneration. Some of his fingers were taped together to mimic rheumatoid arthritis. Popcorn kernels filled his shoes and gloves to imitate neuropathy.
Autumn Rice, a junior at Union High School, instructed Carter through simple tasks that he struggled to comprehend and carry out through all of his obstacles and disorientation, like sorting laundry and wiping down a sink.
When the lights came on, the glasses came off and the earbuds came out, instructor Lainey Millikan asked who was reminded of the patients and extended-care facility residents with dementia whom they work with. Hands went up across the room.
Those students are part of New Castle Career Center’s new certified nursing assistant program. Through their CNA studies, they can earn college credit and a certification that can land them a job in the hire-hungry health-care industry.
The CNA program — one of 18 at the career center — is available to high school juniors and seniors and currently has 20 students, all of whom can earn several college credits.
Angie Talbott, a registered nurse and director of the CNA program, said a growing interest in the career center’s health science education program was part of the reason for starting the CNA course.
The health science education program, which is for high school seniors, also allows students to get their CNA certification and expands into other areas of health care. Students get hospital experience through that program and can earn college credits as well.
“We have had more interest each and every year for people who want to go into health care,” Talbott said. “…And we were having to turn away really good students. And who wants to do that?”
That interest is matched by the industry’s need, she continued.
“The job market is wide open for people who want to do health care,” she said.
Talbott said the CNA course teaches basic care for patients (if they’re in a hospital); clients (if they’re in their home); and residents (if they’re in an extended-care facility). In the field, CNAs assist with activities of daily living, like bathing, shaving and feeding.
“It’s the fundamental class that you would have in every nursing program,” Talbott said.
The CNA class meets for three hours Monday through Friday for its first eight weeks. Then it meets for three hours once a week while students rack up a minimum of 75 hours of on-the-job learning in a clinical setting like an extended-care facility at which they may ultimately be hired.
“It’s pretty intense and very, very busy,” Talbott said. “There’s never down time.”
CPR certification, dementia training and learning 72 skills for care procedures are also part of the CNA curriculum.
“It’s a lot for any person,” Talbott said. “Emotionally and physically, it’s a very demanding thing to do, but it’s also a very noble thing to do.”
Between two Health Science Education programs and the CNA program, the career center expects to license 50 to 60 CNAs this year.
Millikan, a registered nurse, is in her fifth year of teaching at the career center after succeeding an instructor she learned under when she attended as a high school student. She said the career center interviewed close to 100 students for the health science education and CNA programs and that it could only accept 80.
“There was a huge interest in it,” she said.
Carter said his mother having worked as a nurse and his grandmother having taught nurses was part of his motivation for enrolling in the CNA program. Getting his CNA certification early will help with college applications, he continued, adding it will give him a good start toward his goal of being a cardiovascular surgeon.
“It’s eye-opening, honestly,” Carter said of the CNA program. “You get to learn a lot of patience and a lot of new skills.”
