In The News
Ellis Medicine program aims to boost career opportunities
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. (WRGB) — Wilson Lugo, an environmental services supervisor at Ellis Medicine, began his career cleaning beds and doing project work at Bellevue Woman's Center before its merger with Ellis Medicine.
Lugo said, "I started right from the bottom. Cleaning beds, doing project work."
Lugo credits mentorship and guidance within Ellis Medicine for his career advancement. "I had support and help to kind of guide me... from being a project worker to being a team lead, to seeing a position open and have my team management kind of groom me into taking more responsibilities and become a supervisor," he said.
The new Ellis Promise program aims to provide similar career opportunities to others. It is designed for Schenectady High School and SUNY Schenectady graduates, as well as those who have faced employment barriers, offering new pathways for employment, including within the nursing department.
Jackie Montgomery, chief nursing officer at Ellis Medicine, emphasized the variety of roles available. "I think many people assume you have to have a nursing degree, but one of the wonderful things is that we have a number of ancillary and support positions that don't require that college degree," she said. "We have our patient care technicians who are essentially nurses' aides, who may come right out of high school."
Montgomery noted that Ellis Promise has become crucial in addressing staffing shortages exacerbated by the pandemic. "It opens doors for them and gives them opportunities in the healthcare field that maybe they would not otherwise have had," she said.
Interest in the program has been high, Montgomery said. "We've been really building our patient care tech pool with students coming out of Schenectady High School and one of the wonderful things there is that we have the opportunity to help them grow their career with scholarships to our school of nursing, the Belanger School of Nursing."
In addition to patient care techs, Ellis Medicine has open positions in food service and the environmental services team, where Lugo now works. Lugo said, "It has been a challenging progress going through and I'm actually happy I have been through it - definitely, you're going to have that support here. I'm proof of that myself."
Montgomery added, "There are opportunities throughout the entire organization that, again, don't require that degree. Get your foot in the door and maybe you find that you love your position or maybe you find that you want to climb internally."
Read the full article here.
Ellis Medicine | Newsroom
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