Opening Doors to Medical Education

Integrity College of Health held its first open house in late October, inviting prospective students to visit its Lake Avenue campus and programs.

According to Gail Godown, Associate Director of Admissions, the open house was the first public event at the school.

The College has been in the Pasadena community for 13 years. Integrity College of Health was originally founded by mother and daughter registered nurses to educate the community in nursing and allied healthcare programs.

“We have a number of healthcare career training programs,” said Godown, “but what we’re doing here today is just introducing ourselves to the community. We’re trying to do outreach to the community, to let people know that we’re here, a local college.”

Godown also noted that the campus serves a larger population of students who live in Pasadena, and is working with local high schools as well.

As Godown explained further, “Not everyone wants to go to a four-year school. We do get a lot of students from PCC or places where maybe they’re not feeling fulfilled, or it’s such a big place. We’re a very small school, so we can give them a lot of personal attention.”

“They’ll have a lot of interactions with their instructors,” she added.

The school has a number of healthcare career training programs, with many that can be completed in less than a year like Medical Assisting and Medical Billing and Coding.

“They can go pretty far,” said Godown. “A lot of our students will, especially if they don’t have any medical experience or have not worked in the medical field, they’ll start out with a Medical Assisting program, then go into the Vocational Nursing program and then continue to add to their education. And it’s much shorter than if you took a whole four-year program somewhere else.”

According to Godown, the school enrolls students in its programs on a continuous basis, with classes beginning monthly.

“Right now we’re recruiting,” she said, “And we’re still taking classes for this fall with our Diagnostic Medical Sonography program starting this November as well as Medical Assisting and Medical Billing and Coding.”

“We enroll all the time,” said Godown. “We love to see people come on in to find out more about a possible career in healthcare.”

Integrity Health College is at 1460 North Lake Avenue, Pasadena, CA. (626) 808-0215. www.ich.edu.