Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty’s (TRHA) 2025 Sum­mer In­tern­ship Pro­gramme end­ed yes­ter­day morn­ing, af­ter sev­en weeks of train­ing and ex­po­sure for 68 young peo­ple.

The pro­gramme, which be­gan on Ju­ly 8, gave post-sec­ondary and uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence across both clin­i­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive ar­eas of the health sys­tem.

It was held un­der the theme Em­pow­er­ing Our Youth to be Fu­ture Lead­ers and opened with an ori­en­ta­tion and tour of the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Stu­dents were then placed in var­i­ous TRHA de­part­ments where they gained prac­ti­cal train­ing and guid­ance.

At the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Health Sec­re­tary and So­cial Pro­tec­tion Dr Faith Breb­nor en­cour­aged the in­terns to build on what they learned. She told them, “Don’t ig­nore the lessons you got. But al­low them to help you re­veal what your true in­ter­ests and skills are and what your pas­sions re­al­ly are.”

Breb­nor said the in­tern­ship was more than work ex­pe­ri­ence, but al­so an op­por­tu­ni­ty for young peo­ple to lead with hope and pur­pose as they plan their fu­ture.

The TRHA said the in­tern­ship con­tin­ued to be a key in­vest­ment in shap­ing To­ba­go’s fu­ture health­care lead­ers and de­vel­op­ing the is­land’s hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty in health.