Future Health Professionals | Center for Interprofessional Health

The Health Circuit: Mentorship Matters Podcast

About this Project

The Health Circuit: Mentorship Matters podcast is a University of Minnesota project aimed at connecting high school students with healthcare workers, health professional students, educators, and others who want to offer guidance, mentorship, and stories to prospective future healthcare professionals.

This project was initiated as a collaboration between the Morris Challenge – which aims to establish UMN Morris as a trusted resource for rural sustainability – and the OACA/CIH Interprofessional Internship Program – which matches interprofessional student teams with community partners with the goal of fostering leadership, teamwork, and collaborative problem solving.

In each episode, physicians, nurses, therapists, and many other health professions learners and providers will tell the stories of their careers: how they entered healthcare, what they wished they knew when they were younger, their successes, challenges, frustrations, and favorite parts of their work.

You can access these episodes below or on Spotify by searching The Health Circuit: Mentorship Matters.

Background

This project is motivated by a growing concern about healthcare worker shortages, especially in rural areas. As of 2023, there were 525 Health Professional Shortage Areas in Minnesota, and the majority of these areas fell outside of metro centers.

Conversations with community partners throughout greater Minnesota showed that many healthcare workers, healthcare educators, and students in healthcare training programs share these concerns and want to connect more with high school students but lack the personal capacity to do so.

This project is hosted by health professional students and responds to this desire to connect with and mentor students who may be interested in health care, all in a podcast format to increase access to this resource.

Want to learn more?

If you have additional questions about this project or want to become involved, we would love to hear from you.

Student leads:
Saliha Chaudhry ([email protected])
Kevan O’Hanlon ([email protected])

The Morris Challenge Director: Doug Reed ([email protected])
Office of Academic and Clinical Affairs / Center for Interprofessional Health Project Liaison: Dr. Sara North, PT, DPT, PhD, M.Ed., FNAP ([email protected])