Watch now: Sullivan East, West Ridge high schools train future healthcare professionals

BLUFF CITY/BLOUNTVILLE — Some of tomorrow's potential healthcare providers are being trained today at two Sullivan County high school nursing labs.One is Sullivan East High School, where automated "patients" in a new $1 million nursing lab may not be real humans. But high school healthcare training is already at or coming to other Northeast Tennessee high schools, too. STUDENTS' POINT OF VIEWOne of the students in training at the East lab, Leah Kelly, said she is there in part to honor a real human, her mother who nearly died when Leah was 3 years old. Leah and a classmate said they want to help people in the future, possibly both as physicians.What the potential future licensed professional nurses and other health care professionals like 16-year-old Leah will learn there will make a real contribution to the future of healthcare, officials said.Politicians, local education leaders, teachers and students came together Nov. 15, 2024, at East for the ribbon cutting on the $1 million nursing lab funded by Tennessee Innovative School Model Grant through the Tennessee Department of Education."I've just always wanted to be in health care," Kelly said, while fellow freshman Practiksha Yadav, 15, said she's always loved learning how the body and its systems work."She (Leah's mother) almost did pass. Luckily, she powered through," Leah said, adding that her mom still struggles with auto-immune issues.Leah said she wants to become a cardiothoracic surgeon, while Pratiksha said she wants to become a doctor or nurse."I love my mom so I want to do it for her," Leah said.WEST RIDGE HAS PROGRAM, TOOSister school West Ridge High School in Blountville also has a similar lab. A similar event to showcase an Innovative School Model Grant was held Nov. 19 at West Ridge.West Ridge is also one of the eight schools in the Ballad Health Academy LPN program, but West Ridge had a health care lab when it opened in August of 2021. So its November event focused on a new construction trades lab there at the main campus.However, state-of-the-art devices can produce urine as well as present a pulse and make breathing sounds, all in an area that used to house student lockers.EAST PROGRAM PRE-DATES LABTabitha Hall, the new nursing instructor who went to work for East in August of 2024, said she began teaching students then but that the nursing lab wasn't completed until October. Three classes of about 15 students each are in the program, with about the same number for the spring semester.Hall is a former emergency room nurse at Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport, part of Ballad Health.And if students find in the process nursing isn't for them, she said "off ramps" are available to pursue a certified nursing assistant, certified medical assistant, a phlebotomist or physical therapy.WORKING TOGETHEREast Principal Andy Hare said just before the ribbon cutting that the Ballad Health Academy, which is working with East and seven other area high schools on the LPN program, Tennessee Department of Education and Gov. Bill Lee through the Innovative School Model Grant are all crucial players in the success of the nursing lab.So is the Tennessee College of Applied Technology Elizabethton, known as TCAT Elizabethton, that will provide an instructor for the students' final year of LPN training, and Northeast State Community College, where nursing students can seek further training."Working together is why we are strong," Hare said.Sullivan County Director of Schools Chuck Carter said the state grant seamlessly weaved into the Ballad Health Academy grant to allow East students to graduate high school and become LPNs at the same time.BALLAD HEALTH ACADEMY DETAILSIn the future, Northeast Tennessee local high school students can be trained more easily while in high school to start high-demand health care jobs immediately after graduating."This isn't just a nursing program. It starts that way," Alan Levine, chairman and CEO of Ballad Health, said at Jan. 18, 2024, news conference at West Ridge, adding that the program someday will include apprenticeships from Kingsport to Russell County, Virginia, to Mountain City.The Ballad Health Academy will use $15.3 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies and $9 million from Ballad Health to streamline the process of high schoolers upon graduation going straight into the healthcare field where vacancies abound.West Ridge and Sullivan East high schools in Sullivan County, Kingsport's Dobyns-Bennett High and Tennessee High in Bristol are among six schools in five Northeast Tennessee public school systems participating in the pilot program focusing on nursing.The other schools are Elizabethton High and Greeneville High, but the plan is to open the program up to any interested high school in far Southwest Virginia or Northeast Tennessee, Ballad's service area as it merged Wellmont Health Systems and Mountain States Health Alliance. Ballad, Northeast State Community College, Walters State Community College, Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology in Elizabethton and Morristown are partners. The effort was spearheaded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and will begin with licensed professional nurse or LPN certification."You heard so many negatives" about Ballad and health care in general, Sen. Rusty Crowe, R-Johnson City and chairman of the Senate Health Care Committee, said at the January 2024 news conference. "You hear so few positives."Back up at East High in November of 2024, Sullivan County Board of Education Vice Chairman Michael Hughes said he's always believed nurses and teachers "have a special place in heaven, while board member Mary Rouse, who was a high school student when East first opened in 1968, looked back to former Kingsport Superintendent Jeff Moorhouse in the crowd."My locker was just about exactly where you're standing," said Rouse, who later became principal of East. She said the LPN program and lab give students the best opportunities possible, things never thought about in 1968.Moorhouse, corporate director of secondary programs for Ballad Health Academy, said the partnerships among local schools, TCAT, the state and Ballad will help the East program accomplish its mission.However, he said the LPN pathways is the first of many pathways coming from Ballad Health Academy.PART OF STATEWIDE INITIATIVECandi Collier, TDOE senior director of career technical education programs and special projects, said the $560 million from the innovative CTE grants will pay future dividends statewide. High schools get $1 million, while middle schools get $500,000, spendable over four years."You have launched your students into success," Collier said. Somebody who will find a cure for cancer or other diseases may be a student walking the halls of East, she said.Debbie Madgett, career technical education and director for Sullivan County Schools, said: "We are opening a new opportunity for our students, our community and the future of health care."