Dr. Richard Ferguson, president and founder of Black Physicians of Utah, organized the Medicine Immersion Day at Alta View Hospital on Saturday to provide inspiration to young students of color.
The event helped students from high school through medical school make connections with Intermountain’s Black physicians.
“Planting the seed early, showing the kids a path, showing that there’s others that they can aspire to be, that’s all it takes for some of them,” Ferguson said. “Now they got that motivation, they got that fire, that drive to say, ‘I want to be like that surgeon that was up in the front of the room,’ and then they don’t need sometimes much minding after that because these are already fairly studious students that are coming out.
Emmanuel Oyalabu, a medical student at the first ever Medicine Immersion Day at Alta View Hospital in Sandy on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022. Intermountain Healthcare and Black Physicians of Utah put on the event to benefit students of color from communities across the state. Scott Robertson, Alta View’s hospital administrator, said there will be more events like this at Intermountain in the future.