Riverside Health’s Nurse Aide Earn & Learn Program helps students interested in the health care field take their first steps in that direction without incurring a financial burden. A program that began in response to the health care workforce shortage during the COVID-19 pandemic has now graduated 50 classes of certified nursing assistants (CNAs) in only five-and-a-half years. No two students understand the benefits of the program better than Eddie Oliver and Kaidance Wyatt who became CNAs through this program shortly after graduating from Gloucester High School in 2022 and Woodside High School in 2023, respectively. Oliver’s Riverside journey began a bit earlier as an employee of Sanders, a retirement community in Gloucester. “I started working in the kitchen when I was 16,” said Oliver. He had struck up a relationship with the retirement community’s kitchen manager while working at Walmart and was offered a job. Oliver and Wyatt both completed their programs in 2023 after they tu...