Our teenage years are full of life-changing moments — some happen in school, at home or on a sports field. But, for a group of 65 New York City 11^th and 12^th graders, these moments are taking place in spaces you may not expect: Alongside health care professionals in operating rooms, psychiatric wards and emergency departments through medical internships at three city hospitals.

In 2022, the NYC Public Schools launched a pilot program called FutureReadyNYC to connect high schoolers with on-the-job work experience in fields that interest them — from education and technology to health care. Some of the first to go through the program, these students spent eight weeks at three New York City hospitals, all members of Northwell Health, the program’s first health care partner.

From Lenox Health Greenwich Village (LHGV) in lower Manhattan to Lenox Hill Hospital located on the Upper East Side to Long Island Jewish Forest Hills in Queens, the health system opened its doors to students to explore what a career in health care might look like.

The benefits of the medical internships offered through FutureReadyNYC include early college credit, real-world skills and paid work experiences in high-growth fields like health care.

“This program is a powerful way to promote college and career readiness for these students and we are proud to support it,” said Debbie Salas-Lopez, MD, Northwell’s senior vice president of community and population health. “We believe an investment in our future leaders is an investment in the overall health and wellness of our communities.”

From emergency medicine to nursing to lab technology, students spent two weeks at a time shadowing professionals from different sectors of health care. During these “rotations,” they observed the day-to-day of those they shadowed both in and out the hospital setting.

For the latter, health care roundtables offered a chance to learn skills like CPR and placing an IV through simulated trainings, according to Brian Aquart, vice president of workforce and community education at Northwell. An instrumental part of the team that coordinated and oversaw the program, he joined Fernandez and Shrestha on the podcast.

Also stationed primarily at Lenox Hill Hospital, Fernandez remembers things being quiet at the start of her nursing rotation, which was spent with the labor and delivery team. That changed when a nurse invited her to witness a C-section.

“To see these people become parents, words can’t describe,” said Fernandez, who dreams of becoming a surgeon.

More than a shift in perspective, the eight weeks spent inside Northwell hospitals has affirmed her desire to become a surgeon focused on women’s health issues. And as Aquart reminded both students, “We want you to come work here.”

“The big phrase that the city uses for the program is really about career-connected learning that leads to economic viability,” he said. “So we want folks to have their education be actually attached to something tangible and what’s great is those careers actually make money and they make livable wages. That’s important.”

FutureReadyNYC is part of the city Public Schools’ Student Pathways Initiative, which strives to work with employer partners like Northwell Health to connect students to high-growth careers.

Quick to praise their host hospitals and those they’ve learned from, Fernandez and Shrestha both expressed gratitude for the career-shaping insight they received into what a career in medicine may look like.

 “Now that I was able to experience these things, they set an expectation,” Fernandez said. “This really helped set the bar of what I want and what it’s going to look like for me. I’m 100% going to be a doctor.”