Radiologist teams with students to address healthcare staffing shortage
A Hawaii-based radiologist has teamed with a group of high school students to bring greater awareness to careers in the healthcare industry.
Lee Miyasato, MD, a diagnostic radiologist with Kaiser Permanente in Kahului, Hawaii, has been working with a team of students from Maui High School to create a website that introduces youth to a multitude of career options in healthcare. The site includes interviews with professionals in the industry, educational resources and detailed information about the paths students must take to obtain these positions.
Miyasato partnered with the school’s digital media instructor, the late Clint Gima, to bring the project to fruition. Students involved in the project learned new skills in web development, content creation and video production.
“This project has really been a labor of love,” Miyasato told local media outlet Maui News. “It has been incredibly rewarding to see students not only gain skills in website development and content creation, but also become inspired to pursue careers in healthcare. I’d like to extend my sincere gratitude to Mr. Gima, as this website would not exist without his support. He also served as our inspiration to see this project to fruition as part of his legacy in using digital media to change lives and impact our community.”
The shortage of healthcare workers is especially prevalent in Hawaii, where patients often must wait months to see specialists. During the 2024 Hawaii State of Reform Health Policy Conference, Gov. Josh Green—a physician himself—shared that Hawaii is 4,000 healthcare professionals short of what is needed to care for the state’s residents. Although the state has enough beds for patients, it does not have enough staff to care for those individuals, he added.
Miyasato hopes the new career website could help to change these stats in the future by getting youth interested in local healthcare jobs. The work he and the students put into creating the site may already be paying off—one of the students who help build the website recently graduated from nursing school, and several others are now pursuing careers of their own in healthcare.
In addition to her background in journalism, Hannah also has patient-facing experience in clinical settings, having spent more than 12 years working as a registered rad tech. She began covering the medical imaging industry for Innovate Healthcare in 2021.