YSHS alumna comes home to Friends Care Community
- Published: October 3, 2024
By El Mele
Friends Care Community recently announced the tenure of a new administrator-in-training: Kelli Baxter, a 2019 YS High School alumna who, as she told the News in a recent interview, has had a lifelong passion for healthcare.
Baxter’s internship with Friends Care began in August and will end in summer 2025, and is intended to introduce her to every department within a long-term care facility in order to prepare her to eventually become a facility administrator. Friends Care, whose services include independent living, assisted living, rehabilitation and skilled care, will allow Baxter — who is required to shadow each department’s manager — a wide range of experience.
“If a department exists, I’m learning about it, as you really shouldn’t become head of a facility if you don’t know how it runs,” Baxter told the News. “This internship will show me what is needed to have all my ducks in a row as an administrator, and if something is out of place, how to manage it.”
The internship is a requirement for the Nursing Home Administrator Graduate Certificate, a part of Baxter’s Master of Public Health in health policy program at Kent State University; she’s on track to obtain her master’s degree in the fall of 2025.
YSHS alumna Kelli Baxter, class of 2019, recently began an internship at Friends Care Community as an administrator-in-training. (Submitted photo)
“[Working in] public health is like being a nurse or a doctor, but instead you take care of the area you live in,” she said. “This specific section that I’m focusing on with policy management really does come into play with administration because, as a whole, you’re a manager and you’re focusing on taking care of a community.”
Baxter said that after completing her master’s program, she aims to land a job that will teach her more about her chosen field — and help pay off her student loans.
The internship at Friends Care is not Baxter’s first rodeo in long-term care: She also works at an assisted living facility in Xenia — previously as a nurse’s aide, and now as an activities assistant. As part of her position, she runs daily programming for residents, bringing them down to the activity room to play bingo, watch a movie, or sit and talk.
“I call my position ‘a teacher for the elderly,’” she said. “Every activity is a lesson plan.”
Baxter said she was unable to undertake her administrator-in-training internship at her job due to confidentiality restrictions, as well as the need for a facility with a skilled nursing unit. Friends Care is linked to the facility where Baxter is currently employed, and she said she felt as though working at Friends Care in Yellow Springs, where she grew up and attended school, would provide a familiar environment as she learns the new skills Friends Care is uniquely positioned to offer.
“Learning a new area and new facility is so beneficial to what I want to do,” Baxter said. “The sections I’m most interested in at Friends Care are the ones I can’t be a part of at my current job; mostly management and director of nursing. I want to know how busy their lives are and how their roles are important to the facility.”
Baxter added that part of what she loves about her work at the Xenia assisted living facility has been building relationships with residents.
“[The residents] are phenomenal; they’re such a fun time and I love them,” she said. “I’m excited to have the same connection with residents at Friends Care. Every day I make sure to talk to them. That’s another main part of why I’m there; to make the residents comfortable with who I am. I let them know I’m here to help them, and the staff all ensures we work as a team. If you need help, somebody who’s not even in that department is there to help.”
Though Baxter’s current study focus is public health, that wasn’t always the case: Beginning in fifth grade, she said, her mother’s battle with encephalitis spurred her to want to become a nurse.
“She was the breadwinner, and seeing her unable to do the things she used to do really hurt me,” she said. “I took full action in taking care of my mom, along with my dad, even though I was a child, and I loved it. I thought, ‘I love taking care of people, I love healthcare, why not nursing?’”
After getting her State Tested Nursing Assistant Certification through the Greene County Career Center, or GCCC, in 2017 and graduating from GCCC and YS High School in 2019, Baxter studied nursing at Sinclair Community College for two years, obtaining her Licensed Practical Nurse Certification. She tried to transfer to Kent State’s nursing program, but due to missing credits, was advised to enter the public health program, which would make it easier to transfer into the nursing program later.
Despite her childhood dream of becoming a nurse, Baxter said her ambitions shifted away from nursing after her first year in the public health program.
“It was one of the most intense moments in my head; I wanted to do nursing for so long, but there was no second-guessing that I wanted to do public health,” she said. “I love it; there’s so much to offer.”
She added: “It’s still healthcare, I’m just taking care of a whole area.”
It was during a public health policy and decision-making course in the spring semester of her undergraduate senior year — a course she said she loved — that Baxter was encouraged by a professor to apply for both the master’s program and the administrator-in-training internship.
“[My professor] did it and loved it, and saw that same spark in me,” Baxter said. “When I found out that you could incorporate the [administrator-in-training internship] into your master’s program in public health, it all fell together.”
Friends Care Community publicly welcomed Baxter into her internship with a Facebook post late last month — which Baxter said she shared on her own Facebook account. After sharing the post, she said, her aunt commented that Baxter was beginning to live her dream.
“It made me tear up — it struck me in a way; I never thought I would be at this point,” she said. “To say you’re starting to live your dream instead of saying that one day you’ll live it; it’s surreal. I’m excited to tell people what I’m learning.”
*The author is a student at Antioch College and a freelance reporter for the News.
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