TMC recruits/trains staff to avoid shortages | News

TMC is recruiting Tucsonans with little or no medical training to consider taking on the in-demand role of a patient care technician (PCT) through a fully paid in-house program that has graduated nearly 400 enrollees since 2021. 

PCTs help patients with basic needs like meals, hygiene, dressing and bathing. They also help medical staff by taking vital signs, testing patients’ blood sugar and performing EKGs — a test to record the electrical signals in the heart. 

“For people who don’t have the means to get an education, this is an excellent program,” said Reggie Durr, senior recruiter for TMC Health human resources. “The ultimate goal is for the PCTs to become nurses.” 

That goal is being met. The program has graduated more than 380 PCTs so far, and with nine program graduates moving up to more advanced careers, including three nurses, three radiology technicians, one respiratory therapist and one exercise physiologist. 

The eight-week program includes two weeks of classroom training and a skills lab with mannequins, two weeks of clinical practice in the hospital and four weeks of training in a specific hospital unit like medical surgery or cardiac care. 

“The program is fantastic, and it serves a great need,” Durr said. 

Community partnership

Another program that had similar success was LEAP (Learn, Earn, Advance and Prosper). In the late 1990s, TMC partnered with the Arizona Department of Economic Security to develop the welfare-to-work program. The objective was to place 40 people a year into entry-level positions with advancement opportunities. The program was individualized to help each participant reach their highest potential and was truly life-changing for some participants.

A member of the first graduating LEAP class shared her journey as the keynote speaker at the first graduation in 1998. She told the story of how she had gone from being a drug addict, living in her car, to becoming an Environmental Services technician in Surgery Services.  

Cultivating interest in health care

TMC-U, a program utilized in the early 2000s, was a workforce education program. It provided access to academic programs to prepare employees to enter nursing and radiation technician programs. It also included a K-12 Outreach program designed to cultivate interest in health careers among area students.

For those thinking about the PCT program or considering advancing their role through tuition reimbursement, TMC-U participant Rachel Byrnes encourages you to take the initiative.

“You’re never too old to change careers,” she said. “Knowledge is power, and we should all strive to grow that knowledge.”

Byrnes relentlessly pursued a job at TMC just to qualify for TMC-U, where she earned an associate degree in nursing. She moved from Food Services to the Newborn Intensive Care Unit and continued her education using the TMC tuition reimbursement program. 

She eventually earned her master’s degree and she’s now a Nurse Practitioner and manager of TMC Diagnostic Services. 

“I didn’t have the money to go back to school,” Byrnes remembers. “If it wasn’t for these kinds of programs, I couldn’t have become a nurse.”

TMC knows the current program will result in these same kind of success stories in the decades to come.