UPMC Altoona holds career fair
Kylee Bucha (middle) and Maura Kiser (right), both registered nurses, speak to UPMC Altoona spokesperson Bailey Schandelmeier at the hospital’s career fair at Station Medical Center on Wednesday. Mirror photo by William Kibler
Megan Prisk, UPMC Altoona lead dietician, channeled her own experiences in her interactions with high school students attending the hospital’s career fair at Station Medical Center on Wednesday. Mirror photo by William Kibler
Kylee Bucha (middle) and Maura Kiser (right), both registered nurses, speak to UPMC Altoona spokesperson Bailey Schandelmeier at the hospital’s career fair at Station Medical Center on Wednesday. Mirror photo by William Kibler
Megan Prisk, UPMC Altoona lead dietician, channeled her own experiences in her interactions with high school students attending the hospital’s career fair at Station Medical Center on Wednesday. Mirror photo by William Kibler
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At UPMC Altoona's career fair for local high school students Wednesday at Station Medical Center, Megan Prisk channeled her own experience as a young person in her interactions with the kids who came her way.
Prisk is the hospital's lead clinical dietician, but after high school, she didn't know what she wanted to be and chose nutrition studies at Penn State "on a whim" -- although by then she was aiming for some kind of hospital job that would allow her to work a regular 9-5 schedule.
Most of the students she encountered Wednesday were also aiming for a healthcare career, but without knowing specifically what they wanted -- and with many focused on just getting initial employment -- and Prisk was happy to explain all the nutrition-related options.
Some of the students were "overwhelmed" with the idea that they would need six years of post-secondary education and a master's degree to become certified nutritionists like Prisk, but she informed them there are various jobs in the hospital kitchen that require less education -- including some that high schoolers can fill.
The hospital not only hires dietician graduates from schools like Penn State and Indiana University of Pennsylvania, but also is supportive of existing department employees who want to go back to college for their master's so they can become dieticians, Prisk said.
Given that she worked in the food and nutrition department at Mount Nittany during her time at Penn State, helping solidify her growing ambition to end up as a dietician, she sees the current progress of others in her department as representing an instance of things coming "full circle."
Many of the students she saw Wednesday thought of nutritionist work as simply dispensing advice on eating healthful fruits and vegetables, she said.
She sees her job more broadly, as helping to "heal people through nutrition," including patients who must be fed through tubes or intravenous lines, she said.
It's doubly satisfying that her medium of healing -- food -- is almost universally a source of "great joy," she said.
Registered nurses
Registered nurses Maura Kiser and Kylee Bucha asked the students who came to their table trivia questions about the kind of work that Kiser and Bucha perform on their medical progressive care floor, harnessing the kids' competitive spirit as a way to get them interested in such work.
Like Prisk, Kiser and Bucha told the students about a variety of roles: secretary, nursing assistant and patient and family concierge among them.
Kiser was inspired to become an RN because her mother was one.
Bucha was inspired based on having cared for vulnerable family members.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.