March 26, 2026
Portsmouth, NH – For a 17-year-old, Georgia Ranz of East Kingston, New Hampshire has spent a lot of time in the company of physicians and nurses, and not because she has been sick. In fact, it has been quite the opposite. She has been on the health care provider side.
The Exeter High School student spent her sophomore and junior year fall semesters interning with health care professionals at Portsmouth Regional Hospital (PRH) and the PRH-affiliated Seabrook freestanding emergency department (ED). The opportunity to explore health care careers resulted from the PRH Extended Learning Opportunities (ELO) program.
Terilyn Hudson, the Academic Partnership Coordinator for the ELO program, explained that the program partners with local area high schools to assign students to one unit and immerse them in the workforce, with the intent of helping them to explore potential careers in health care. In the handful of years that the program has been operating, hundreds of students have participated, with many, like Ranz, participating for more than one semester. The ELO program runs throughout the school year, and three New Hampshire HCA Healthcare hospitals, PRH, Frisbie Memorial Hospital and Parkland Medical Center, participate.
While Ranz isn’t 100% certain yet of which health care profession she would like to pursue, the ELO program has given her a direction to look toward. She found herself drawn to the “diagnostic” side, particularly emergency care or pediatrics.
“I was placed on a nursing floor, and I found that I really liked the diagnostic process more than bedside nursing,” she said of her experience at PRH. That was what inspired her to apply for the program again, but this time at the freestanding ED.
The program provides students with the chance to learn about health care specialties that are often not as well-known and that may have workforce shortages. Ranz said that she has friends who have been through the ELO program and are now in college working toward careers in pediatric surgery and nursing anesthesiology.
The New Hampshire Hospital Association (NHHA) released a report in late 2025, “Challenges Confronting New Hampshire’s Health Care System,” that outlined some of the workforce shortages that hospitals are facing. During the surveyed timeframe, there was a 13.1% vacancy rate for all positions. Specifically, there was a 16.8% vacancy rate for all registered nurse (RN) positions, 28.5% for certified/licensed nurse assistants and 18.4% for respiratory therapists.
Ranz is now working at a day care after school, further exploring her interest in working with children.
“I feel like people think health care is all science and math and don’t understand the many career options within the industry. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to be in a clinical environment and to be exposed to the behind-the-scenes of different jobs as that can really tell you whether or not you want to be in that field,” Ranz said.
Hudson said this is what the program is really all about. “We understand that choosing a career path can be a daunting task. That’s why we help students explore careers in health care and build their confidence to pursue them. In the process, we are hopefully building a strong future health care workforce for the community, one student at a time.”
