A career in health care is always rewarding.

In a tough economy, it just might be recession-resistant, as well.

“Health care doesn’t see the peaks and valleys that a lot of other occupations might see,” said Dale Gisi, director of human resources for Rapid City Regional Hospital.

The health care industry is not recession-proof, Gisi said, but it tends to be more stable than the general economy does.

“Demand typically is always there. There is some fluctuation … but people still need health care.”

Regional Health hosted the 17th annual Health Care Career Fair at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center on Thursday, which drew more than 300 students from about 40 area schools. By the end, most of them were sporting neon-colored arm splints like the one Haley Henton, a freshman from Alliance, Neb., picked up at the orthopedics booth.

Other popular hands-on exhibits at the more than 30 booths let gloved, gowned and masked students practice their suturing skills and observe open-heart surgical techniques, courtesy of a pig’s heart.

Candy M&Ms replaced pills at Western Dakota Technical Institute’s pharmacy technician program booth. 

Feats of strength, balance and brain power were required of participating students at Regional Rehabilitation Institute’s booth promoting careers in physical, occupational and speech therapy.

And, at the respiratory therapy booth, Mindy Williamson performed a successful intubation on a dummy after finding its vocal chords and avoiding its esophagus.

Williamson, a junior from Moorcroft, Wyo., volunteers as a basic emergency care provider with the Moorcraft Ambulance Service and plans a career as a registered nurse. Williamson wants to be a nurse because she likes helping people, but Gisi also picked a health care profession that he expects will see significant job growth in the future.

“The job market for registered nurses and licensed practical nurses is always a growth area,” Gisi said.

Regional Health hired between 80 and 100 nurses last year, a significant portion of the 500 to 550 new hires it made last year, Gisi said.

There isn’t a severe shortage of nurses in the Rapid City area now, but an aging population, combined with increasingly complex medical treatments, will increase the demand for more nurses, he said.

“South Dakota is better off than many other regions of the country, but we still have shortages in most clinical professional areas,” Gisi said.

Pharmacy and imaging services also promise to be growth areas for medical jobs.

Not all jobs in health care are medical, said Mark Thuringer, who was manning the plant operations booth at the fair. Engineers and equipment technicians are needed to maintain everything from hospital beds to operating room spotlights.

Thuringer’s infared camera –- a $30,000 thermal imager -– is normally used to test electric panels without switching them off, something that might pose problems for sensitive biomedical equipment. On Thursday, it was giving temperature readouts of light fixtures, heating and cooling vents and people’s bodies.

Numerous educational institutions participated in the fair, including Dakota State University in Madison, which has a respiratory care program in conjunction with Regional Health. The respiratory care field is expected to be one of the fastest-growing medical occupations in the U.S., adding almost 38,000 new jobs by 2012. In South Dakota, the starting salary for respiratory therapists is about $20 per hour.

DSU respiratory therapy student Katy Guillory, 34, spent the health fair inflating and deflating a pig’s lung to demonstrate lung pathologies caused by smoking.

By taking online courses and college classes at Rapid City sites from five state universities, Guillory said she’ll earn her DSU Associate of Science degree without ever leaving Rapid City.

Given the development of Rapid City as a medical center, Guillory and a lot of locally educated health care students may not have to leave to find a job, either, Gisi said.

“There’s definitely great opportunities within Rapid City in all the medical careers. They don’t have to leave Rapid City to have a career,” he said.