For one week each summer, a select group of local high school students trades the classroom for the hospital floor. The Healthcare Academy for Medical Professions (HCAMP), hosted by Ascension St. Vincent Fishers, is a free, highly competitive weeklong day camp that puts teens on the front lines of medicine. Students must apply and be selected to participate, and each year the program draws far more applicants than it can accept.

Throughout the week, campers move through a curriculum most nursing students would envy. In Stop the Bleed training, students learn critical, life-saving wound-packing and tourniquet techniques. Surgery Day puts orthopedic surgery tools in their hands and lets them try cutting-edge robotic surgery simulators — the same technology transforming operating rooms across the country.

Then the intensity ramps up. The Mass Casualty Simulation challenges students to work in teams to triage and treat multiple “patients” in a fast-paced, simulated disaster scenario, making split-second decisions about who needs care first. The week culminates in the Trauma Simulation, a heart-pounding finale inside the Emergency Department where students manage a critical trauma case from arrival through stabilization.

I got a peek at the Mass Casualty Simulation this week, watching students work in teams to assess and treat a range of injuries in a mock emergency setting. What struck me was how quickly these teens shifted from nervous observers to confident participants, communicating like a real care team.

Aleks Overbey, President of Ascension St. Vincent Fishers, welcomed the students on the camp’s first day and checked in on their work throughout the week. His presence underscores how seriously the hospital takes this program — not as a public relations exercise, but as an investment in the next generation of caregivers.

That investment matters. HCAMP is offered at zero cost to selected students, funded through the hospital’s community benefit dollars, removing financial barriers that might otherwise keep talented teens out. The program builds a rare bridge between local youth and the working medical community, sparking interest in nursing, surgery, emergency medicine, and respiratory therapy at a moment when the healthcare system needs new professionals more than ever.

For some students, that spark is already catching. Paige McGuckin, entering her senior year at Hamilton Southeastern High School, told me she plans to apply to nursing school.

Watch my brief video conversation with Aleks Overbey and Paige McGuckin below.