Two recent Alachua County Public School graduates will be in Dallas, Texas for the next few days showing just how much they’ve learned about the healthcare field.

Amy Mosely and Stephen Ferguson, who just graduated from Gainesville High School’s Academy of Health Professions (AHP), are currently participating in the national Health Occupations Student Association (HOSA) Conference and Competition. The students earned their way into the national competition with big wins at the Florida competition in April.

Mosely, who was one of the top-ranked overall graduates at GHS, qualified for the national competition with a first place state win in the nursing assistant category. At the nationals she’ll take a written test similar to the one required to earned certification as a nursing assistant. She’ll then demonstrate her clinical skills by interacting with a simulated ‘patient.’

Mosely says her experiences in the AHP, particularly the required clinical rotations at Shands at AGH and at the Park Meadows Rehabilitative Center, were a big part of her success.

“There’s a big difference between ‘book’ patients and real patients,” she said. “In the book everything seems so straightforward, but when you actually get out into the hospital or the nursing home you realize it’s a lot harder than it seems in the book.”

Ferguson took second place at the state level in medical spelling, a category which requires that he accurately spell and define complex terms related to the healthcare field—words like ‘koilocyte,’ which is a particular kind of cell.

Ferguson says the AHP and the HOSA competitions will help him reach his goal of working in emergency medicine.

“It’s a lot of fun, and it’s given me a great head start,” he said. “I have a really strong base because of what I did in high school.”

Mary Beth Russo, an AHP instructor who is taking the students to the national competition, says the experiences offered through the program and the competition mean more than trophies and individual glory.

“These students develop their leadership skills,” she said. “They learn to work in a team setting and become more confident in their abilities and their decision-making.”