Ask most kids who say they want to work in healthcare what they want to be, and you’ll get one of three answers. Doctor. Nurse. Vet. Not because those are the right fit — because those are the only ones that come to mind. And they usually can’t name very many types of doctors and also definitely don’t know why they might be interested in one career over another. And it’s not just kids. If I asked you, right now, to list healthcare careers off the top of your head, you’d probably name a handful and then stall. Not because you’ve never heard of the rest — but because they just don’t surface when you’re put on the spot. Now imagine being ten years old, trying to picture your whole future from that same short list.

So let me give you a couple that probably didn’t make your list. A child life specialist — the person whose entire job is helping a frightened kid understand and cope with what’s happening to them in the hospital. Or a surgical assistant, which isn’t the kind of job most people think it is. A surgical assistant is not the person handing the surgeon instruments — that’s the scrub tech. The surgical assistant is working directly on the patient, right alongside the surgeon, helping perform the operation. Hands in the field. Most people have no idea that job exists, and it’s a real, trained career someone can work toward.

A kid who picks “doctor” because it’s the only word that surfaces isn’t really choosing because they don’t know their choices. And going with the default can fall apart years later — sometimes without a word, when a kid just stops mentioning the dream, and sometimes long after, when they feel like are already too far down the wrong path to be able to turn around but finally realize the thing they’d have loved was out there the whole time and no one showed them.

So in MedPath, career exploration isn’t a unit we tack on at the end. It’s woven through the whole program. And there are two main ways your student runs into it.

The first is something called MedPath Insights. These are sprinkled throughout the curriculum — starting all the way back in Level 1 — so that as your student is learning, they keep getting to watch real medicine actually happening. Real clinicians, real situations, with me alongside them explaining what’s going on and why. The sample in this module is one of my favorites: I react to al video from the lung rescue program at Penn Medicine, pausing the footage to explain what the team is doing to keep someone alive. Your student isn’t just watching something dramatic — they’re learning to understand what they’re seeing. And because Insights show up from Level 1 on, a kid isn’t waiting until high school to feel like part of the world of medicine. They’re in it early.

The second is the career profiles themselves — dozens of them. In this module you’ll meet the registered nurse, one of the most versatile and most misunderstood careers in all of healthcare. There’s a full profile, coloring pages, and a “would you rather” question that gets your kid thinking about whether that kind of daily work actually sounds like them.

And I’ve put together a career map — every career MedPath currently covers, organized by the career focus, not just alphabetically. It’s a lot of careers, and we are always adding more. So if you ever look and wonder whether something new got added, just reach out and ask.

Here’s my ask. Don’t let your kid keep choosing from three options when there are dozens. Go explore this module, read the nurse profile together, and then open that career map as a family. Let your kid point at something they’ve never heard of and say “wait — that’s a job?” That question is the reason the career pages are there. The link’s here and in your email. Enjoy!