 Over 15 schools from surrounding counties joined Friday at the Appalachian Wireless Arena for SOAR's Healthcare Career Pathway Fair. Really it's a simple purpose for today. Get our healthcare partners like hospitals, get our educational institutions and our high school students in the same place to talk about healthcare opportunities in eastern Kentucky. The reality is there's tons of available jobs, there's tons of opportunity for students from the region to go to schools locally to get school paid for, to graduate debt-free and to come into careers that are good paying careers with full benefits and nobody has to leave. All that's right here in eastern Kentucky. With three hospitals helping host the fair, students had a chance to experience healthcare opportunities first hand. We've got Pikeville Medical Center, we've got Appalachian Regional Healthcare and we've got Q's daughter's medical system and healthcare system represented here today. We've got three educational sessions, there's a simulation in one, but really all three of these are just to give more information related to healthcare careers. It's really what the day-to-day looks like, right? So for high school students, especially those that aren't sure what they want, which I was there before and not knowing what you wanted to do, consider a career here and here's what it could look like so that students can kind of think about, can I see myself doing things? Is this a good fit for me? Because it's nursing, it's pharmacy techs, it's phomotomists, it's all these lab techs, med techs, there's so many different types of support roles that they probably don't get the credit that they need to get but it's what makes everything in a hospital run smoothly and those roles are open, roles that pay $25, $30 an hour. So those educational sessions that are each led by those hospital systems, they're going to give students a taste of what those roles look like and that way students can take that information and think about is this something that can be a potential good fit for me? At Pikeville Medical Center, we believe that together, we can make a difference in the fight against cancer. We are proud to have patients who have experienced successful outcomes over many years. As always, we believe in the power of faith. Pikeville Medical Center, where cancer can be defeated. Afterward, we spoke with aspiring nurse and student Donovan Workman who says seeing the educational sessions is extremely beneficial. It really gives you a good insight on what it is really like inside of a trauma room. You would think that everybody would be panicking or it's a very stressful situation but they make it look really calm and they're really focused and good at what they do. Lastly, Workman says he hopes other students see that there are healthcare career paths within our region. That there are so many options in the healthcare field and it's an ever-growing working field that requires people and needs more people every day and there will not be a day that you don't need a job there that you are not needed and every job there impacts people. For Mountain Top News, I'm Joel Korjol.