Success Stories
Tyrone Turner
The summer of 2010 was a challenging one for Workforce Investment Areas across Maryland. Most had spent their American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds, and had little money for summer youth employment. With help from a Congressional earmark, City funds, and other donations, the Baltimore Mayor’s Office of Employment Development managed to offer positions to 80 percent of eligible applicants.
Tyrone Turner was one of the lucky ones.
Mr. Turner, then a junior at Baltimore’s Dunbar High, learned about MOED YouthWorks at Dunbar, where counselors and teachers helped him develop a resume and prepare for his job interviews. Mr. Turner was thrilled when Sinai Hospital hired him. “I knew I wanted to be a radiologist,” he said, ‘which is why they placed me in the ER Radiology Department.
“I loved the ER,” he recalled. “Things are always happening. We got to see the EMTs [emergency medical technicians] bring [seriously hurt patients] in, and check things off, and see how the nurses would treat patients in an emergency. That was the most exciting part. My job was to go back to the patients’ rooms, take them to x-ray, and return them to their rooms. I also did other things such as assisting patients who couldn’t be moved with their portable x-rays, getting patients more blankets,” and otherwise helping make them more comfortable.
Mr. Turner learned how work differs from school. “Working with a boss, you have to be on time. I was never late a single time. Having a boss made me think differently; teachers are more lenient.” Mr. Turner’s boss and mentor, radiology technician Carl Carlton, “was the person who gave me the most hands-on experience. He showed me how to do things, and he would ask me to come with him and help him or observe him.” Mr. Carlton also recommended Mr. Turner to attend clinical grand rounds with staff, an honor reserved for “star performers” among the students. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrJg6Gqqbds for interviews with Turner and Carlton.)
Dunbar, where Mr. Turner is now a senior, is a health professions school, “so I knew a lot about the human body and how it works. That’s why the people I worked with were so impressed with what I knew.” His patients were impressed as well; several of them told his supervisors that they appreciated his good manners, his neat appearance, and his considerate demeanor. “They want you to make people feel comfortable, because a hospital is a scary place. I learned to tell older people and young kids what would happen.”
Volunteer Manager Beth Markowitz corroborated that: “In the three years I’ve been here,” she said, “I’ve had only a few people pull me aside and give me glorious feedback about student volunteers.” Staff, retired nurse volunteers, and other older volunteers praised Mr. Turner’s work. Plus, for the first time ever, a patient called Ms. Markowitz with good feedback on a volunteer. “We would be honored to have Tyrone back,” she concluded.
Mr. Turner’s success is especially noteworthy because the position at Sinai Hospital was his first job. “I loved it,” he enthused. “It was such a great experience, because I got to be in the field where I want to work in the future. I got to see how the profession is actually done. Behind the scenes, I got to see the process from the doctors upstairs down to the technicians.”
Future plans include college and medical school. “I want to major in biology, then hopefully become a radiologist.” In the meantime, though, Mr. Turner reports that “I go back to Sinai and see how people are doing. They’re a bunch of great people. They treated me with respect and looked after me; they were like another family.”
With one college acceptance letter already in hand at the end of 2010 and other college applications pending, he may well return to Sinai eventually as a radiologist.
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