The Health Occupations Students of America held the Florida State competition in Orlando on April 2-4 and three students from High Tech North, in Cape Coral, won top honors in their individual competitions. Six HTN students qualified to compete at the state competition and five won awards.
Jennilee Williams is a student in Jeanice Porta’s Medical Coder/Biller program and she competed in the Medical Terminology competition and won the first place gold medal. Carmen Gonzalez and Shannon Rademacher are both in the Practical Nursing program and both won first place gold medals in Extemporaneous Speaking and Practical Nursing, respectively. Rosa Murphy is a Practical Nursing student who won 4th place in Medical Mathematics and Cathy Jaffray is in Melody Allen’s Medical Administrative Specialist program and earned 4th place in Medical Terminology. Ron Burns is also a practical nursing student who participated in the Medical Mathematics competition.
Each of these students earned the opportunity to compete at the state level by winning at regional competitions. At the state level they went head-to-head with Health Occupations students from other technical schools and colleges. Practical Nursing instructor Jackie Houle said that the HTN students went into the competition well trained and confident, but were nervous about the competition. Each of the competitions emphasizes skills taught and needed in the Health Occupations.
“Competitions like this allow students to demonstrate their skills and to build confidence in what they can do,” Houle said in a prepared statement. “These students are well trained and earned top honors at the state level.”
Jennilee Williams, Carmen Gonzalez and Shannon Rademacher will now go to the next level of competition and challenge other gold medal winners at the National competition. That competition will be held in Nashville, Tennessee on June 24-27.

Source: High Tech North