The annual intensive immersion program for health professions students is a paid, full-time shadowing opportunity set in a rural Illinois community.

The 2024 Six-Week Interprofessional Preceptorship (SWIP), offered in collaboration with Northwest AHEC, began last week at KSB Hospital in Dixon.

The four student participants are completing over 100 hours of job shadowing, classroom discussions on rural health, and will be creating a community service learning project.

They were drawn to the program as a way to advance their careers in health care and to deepen their understanding of health needs and challenges in rural areas. Here’s what they told us.

Andruw Jones, a Biology major in his junior year at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, is looking to become a family physician and general surgeon. He hopes SWIP will “deepen my understanding of my rural community” and help him “learn more about rural community health care and how to improve it.”

Mallory Powers, a rising junior at Illinois Wesleyan, is majoring in Kinesiology with a minor in Psychology. She wants to be an occupational therapist and hopes that via SWIP she will “learn more about the different health professions that exist in a hospital. “I chose SWIP because of everything you get to do,” she said. “You don’t only get to shadow what you are most interested in, but you get to shadow a lot of different professions. Also, I’m excited to make connections that help me with future employment and career growth.”

Charlotte McCoy graduated with a Bachelor’s in Speech Pathology and Audiology from Western Illinois University and starts graduate work there this fall. Looking forward to a career as a speech pathologist, she hopes the SWIP experience will be a way “to learn how to work well in a multidisciplinary team in a rural area.” She had previously shadowed at KSB and “had a great experience,” she says, adding “I have grown up in Dixon my whole life and wanted to learn more about how rural hospitals run.”

Jose Espinoza, who is majoring in Public Health, with am emphasis on community health, at WIU, will be a junior in the fall. Interested in a career in epidemiology or a lab-related setting, he signed up for SWIP to “learn about the different areas in health care and to utilize that knowledge to eliminate the ignorance and disparities that are present in modern health care. “This program caught my attention,” he told us, “due to it being an interdisciplinary and interprofessional-focused mentorship. This program opened pathways for me to gain knowledge in a setting that is different from my suburban lifestyle.”

Echoing these sentiments, Mallory added that she also chose SWIP “because I want to get involved more in my community. I believe we will be covering a lot of topics that seem very interesting! I’m very grateful for this opportunity.”

Learn more about SWIP.

Clockwise from top left: Andruw Jones, Mallory Powers, Charlotte McCoy, Jose Espinoza