Student-Athlete Profile -- Damien Haskins
November 24, 2015 | Football
By Brooks Hatch
OSUBeavers.com
Damien Haskins realizes his life doesn't end when his football career does.
So the personable redshirt sophomore running back from New Boston, Texas, is already laying the foundation for a future career in the public health field, hopefully as the manager of some sort of health-care facility.
Haskins is a public health major with an option in health management and policy who recently was named to the 2015 CoSIDA Capital One Academic All-District Team. He has a 3.47 cumulative GPA, and is now a finalist for the CoSIDA Academic All-America team.
In the off-season he pre-interned at the new Samaritan Sports Medicine Center, located in the shadow of the Valley Football Center and Reser Stadium. The practicum, under the auspices of OSU's College of Public Health, helped prepare him for a full internship, which he'll start sometime after football season.
“It made me realize the most important thing about college is that you can't play football forever,” he said. “You have to set yourself up for the future, and do something you love doing.
“Health care was something I like to do and something I can see myself doing for the next 20 years. Public health care is really changing, with the Affordable Care Act, and with baby boomers aging.
“We are always going to have some kind of skilled nursing facilities or hospitals that will need managing. I want to get into the management side, and manage the whole facility.”
Overseen by Director of Operations Tonya Ruscoe-East, Haskins learned about all operational aspects of the 17,500-foot Samaritan Sports Medicine Center, which opened on Dec. 1, 2014.
Home to orthopedic surgeons, sports medicine specialists, physician assistants and physical therapists, it is open to the university community, OSU athletics and the general public, and also serves as a site for student internships, training and research.
“We formed a great partnership,” Ruscoe-East said. “He was new, I was new and together we had a great time, him learning about the organization and all of us learning about Damien.”
Haskins worked about 5-to-10 hours a week for three months, preparing for his upcoming full-fledged internship.
“Mostly it was him getting to know us, and spending time helping us with our patient-flow process,” Ruscoe-East said. “Damian helped us learn a little more about the patient experience.
“He indicated he wanted to learn everything he could,” to ready himself for someday managing a health-care facility. “So we started at the ground and worked our way up.”
Haskins said working with Ruscoe-East was exciting, and very informative.
“She runs the whole facility,” he said. “She makes sure everything flows and is running smoothly.”
Haskins described his responsibilities as “basic.”
“I shadowed doctors, nurses, physical therapists and others, and saw how they worked together,” he explained. “I sat in on meetings to see how everything was funded, and to see how everything worked together.
“It was a nice experience. What I liked the most was the people. I was able to meet [many people in the health-care field] and see how their everyday work life went. It was nice to see how that all went together.”
He learned that an effective health-care facility is a lot like a successful football team, with many different parts that must work together to be the best unit possible.
“My biggest takeaway from the experience was, how important their job was to the people” who worked there, and to those who were treated there, he said. “It made me realize that public health is pretty important.
“Working there opened up the real world to me as far as how health care effects people. You actually go out and change somebody's life by doing your everyday job.”
Haskins also opened some eyes with his approach to his opportunity.
“Some of us had a pre-conceived notion of what it would be like to have an OSU football player here, and he blew those out of the water,” Ruscoe-East said. “He was very professional, he always came dressed for professional work. He was a professional man coming to do a job, and that impressed all of us.
“He did a great job we are excited to have him back for his internship in the spring. We didn't want to see him go. When he comes back we will be very excited to see him.”
