When Shane Lyerly, M.D., decided he wanted to pursue a career in health care, he admittedly had more questions than answers. What classes should he take? Would it help to shadow a doctor for a day? How should he prepare for medical school interviews?
Thankfully, he had help from both an academic advisor at Arkansas State University and from an education coordinator at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS).
“It was really important to have someone kind of guide us and tell us the things we needed to focus on,” Lyerly said. “We had people who could sit down and do mock interviews with us and who knew how the interview process was going to go. It all helped us to be the best applicants for medical school that we could be.”
Now that he’s a practicing physician, Lyerly doesn’t hesitate to give back to what he hopes is the next generation of medical professionals.
A 2011 graduate of UAMS’ College of Medicine, Lyerly recently spent time talking about his educational and career paths with northeast Arkansas high school students as part of UAMS’ A Day in the Life program. It was something he was more than happy to do.
“Because there were people willing to help us when we were students, I absolutely want to be there for the students of today whenever I can,” Lyerly said. “Hopefully I was able to answer some questions and maybe inspire some of these students to pursue a career in health care.”
The Day in the Life program is a one-day event for juniors or seniors in high school who have an interest in health care professions. Students hear from a variety of speakers across a wide spectrum of medical careers, such as pharmacists, nurses, athletic trainers and physical therapists. Students also get to engage in hands-on activities where they simulate actual medical care on items like manikins, fruit or even each other.
The event at which Lyerly spoke was held in Jonesboro at the UAMS Northeast Regional Campus, though similar programs are held at UAMS regional campuses around the state. Students at the Jonesboro event used oranges to learn how injections are given and measured each other’s blood pressure with a sphygmomanometer, better known as a blood pressure cuff. They also learned about respiratory care and the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) using specialized manikins.
For Dylan Tedder, the education coordinator for the UAMS Northeast Regional Campus who organized the Day in the Life event, showing students that there are a variety of opportunities is the focus of the day.
“Our goal is to promote working in health care and to expose students to as many different health careers as possible, maybe even show them areas they may not have heard of before,” Tedder said. “If students have an interest in working in health care, hopefully we can confirm that for them. And this gives them a chance to see what working in health care is like day-to-day.”
The event certainly helped Reed Lawless. A junior at Brookland High School in Brookland, Arkansas, Lawless had his interests piqued by what he heard about anesthesiology at the Jonesboro event.
“I learned a lot from all the presenters,” Lawless said. “Being able to hear about so many different areas of health care helped me kind of figure out what I liked and what I didn’t like and to just generally get a bigger picture of the different jobs in the medical field. Right now, I think I’d like to go into anesthesiology. It’s a very interesting field.”
With health care providers often in short supply in rural areas, Tedder sees programs like A Day in the Life as a way to ultimately help increase access to medical care across Arkansas. The hope is that students decide to pursue a career in health care and then come back home and practice in areas that have a high need for medical providers.
“We just want to show them that there is a path out there that leads to a career in health care,” Tedder said. “Doctors Shane and Meghan Lyerly are great examples. They are both from northeast Arkansas, graduated from Arkansas State and then went to UAMS for medical school. Now, they’re back in the area practicing medicine.”
Like Tedder, Lyerly sees the bigger picture, which is why he was happy to spend part of his day sharing advice.
“We’ll always need good doctors and nurses and other health care providers in the community,” Lyerly said. “If Meghan and I can inspire some of these students to go into health care and then come back to their communities here in northeast Arkansas, that’s only going to help in the long run.”
