Dwight Osborne was drawn toward health care from an early age. While still a young child, he witnessed a serious automobile accident and was impressed with the paramedic response. “I saw they all worked together. They just seemed like they knew exactly what to do. I was just like, yeah, that’s something for me.”

While Dwight knew he wanted to work in health care, he didn’t have a plan for how to get there. Freshman year classes at his local high school left him uninspired, with everything but biology feeling like a distraction. “They’re putting all these options in your face,” he said. “You know, they’re not putting what you like, so you’re not as attentive in classes.”

Dwight’s mother suggested RINI, and it turned out to be a great fit. But by his junior year, he often found himself idle after finishing his work early. That’s when the principal approached him about taking college classes. This made him realize, “I should be doing more with my time. Why just be wandering around? I could be doing more and getting more licenses and building my future.”

After that, Dwight began taking college-level anatomy, participating in an internship on the surgical wing of a local hospital, and working on his nursing assistant certification. These activities helped him hone his health care interests. He had originally wanted to become a cardiothoracic surgeon, but the internship showed him a surgery career wasn’t for him. “I just figured that’s not the life I wanted because I love family, and every doctor that I spoke to, they couldn’t hang with their family because they were working all the time.” After he earned his license as a certified nursing assistant (CNA), it only took a week for him to see that it wasn’t a good fit either. He explained, “It wasn’t the kind of health care that I wanted. I wanted to be the one saving lives, you know?”

At this time, Dwight’s teachers suggested he earn his emergency medical technician (EMT) certification. “They saw my interests,” he said, “and they saw how good I was with memorization, and they know that’s what that job is, because you have to memorize all the drugs and all that. So they asked me to come in for a meeting, and then they pitched it to me, and I was like, I’m so for it. Why not?”

Dwight completed his EMT coursework at RINI, earned his basic license after graduation, and has worked as an EMT for two and a half years. He has also nearly completed his advanced EMT-cardiac license—something that has been delayed by difficulty getting hospital hours during the pandemic. 

In the long term, Dwight plans to be an emergency room nurse. He completed 26 hours of college credit toward this end while at RINI—enough to begin college as a sophomore—and completed an additional year of school at the University of Rhode Island (URI). When financial difficulties forced him to leave college temporarily, he was grateful he was prepared for a job he valued. “I went to take the state testing for EMT. I passed, and I just fell back on that. So when I say I’m very grateful for RINI for giving me that, it’s like, they gave me something to actually do in life, you know?”

To pay his debt at URI and save to continue his schooling, Dwight is working as an EMT. After completing his bachelor’s degree in nursing, he plans to work at Rhode Island Hospital where his mother and several of his family members are employed as phlebotomists and security guards. 

Dwight credits RINI not only with laying the pathway toward his goal of being an emergency room nurse, but also with giving him experiences that will make him better at his job when he gets there. Reflecting on the journey, he said his stint as a CNA “was very useful because I talk to CNAs every single day. I know how it is to know both sides, and then one day, when I get my nursing degree, I’m going to look at EMTs and I’ll be like, I’ve been there.” 

Of his early schooling Dwight said, “I just wanted more.” He doesn’t know where he’d be now without RINI and said, if given the chance, “I’d definitely do it over and grind even harder. That school was just perfect for me.”