Onvida Health camp gives Yuma students hands-on look at medical careers
Forty Yuma students tried suturing, PPE and surgical robots at Onvida Health's camp, a hands-on push to grow the local nurse and doctor pipeline.
Forty high school and college students moved through suturing drills, personal protective equipment practice and simulation exercises at Onvida Health. Elizabeth Hammonds, Onvida Health’s director of volunteer services, steered students toward a broad view of healthcare careers and the training they would need to enter them.
The five-day 2025 program ran from Monday, July 14, through Friday, July 18, and included classroom learning, hospital tours, career panels, skill demonstrations and shadowing opportunities. Students also tried out surgical robots through hands-on simulations. Camp sessions covered emergency medicine, nursing, radiology, respiratory therapy, pharmacy, cardiology, stress management, lab services and wound care, with mock surgeries, childbirth simulations, emergency scenarios and pharmacy simulations woven into the schedule.
The camp has become one part of a larger volunteer pipeline at the hospital. More than 25 local high school and college students took part in the camp in 2023, and 28 student volunteers graduated in 2024, all of them already pursuing or planning careers in healthcare. One student volunteer later said the camp helped confirm a nursing path after shadowing a labor and delivery nurse and taking part in Mentor Me MD, while another said it helped them fall in love with surgery.
Onvida accounted for more than 14% of the county’s workforce and generated $693.3 million in total labor income in 2025. The health system and the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix have also announced Arizona’s first rural regional medical school branch, with a three-year Primary Care Accelerated Pathway beginning in July 2026 that will take up to 45 students over its first three years, 15 per year, with full-tuition scholarships funded by Onvida and clinical training based in Yuma. Onvida and Arizona Western College broke ground on a 50,000-square-foot Health Careers Center in October 2024, and the building is expected to be complete in early 2027.
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