{"id":12791,"date":"2023-09-25T18:53:18","date_gmt":"2023-09-25T18:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/?p=12791"},"modified":"2025-12-16T21:52:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T21:52:24","slug":"confronting-the-health-care-shortage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/2023\/09\/25\/confronting-the-health-care-shortage\/","title":{"rendered":"Confronting the health care shortage"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Alyssa Raiolo \u201923<\/strong>, PA student (Courtesy photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s later in the evening, but Augsburg physician assistant student Alyssa Raiolo \u201923<\/strong> happily takes the time to journal. Gratitude flows into her as she reflects on the experiences of her recent days.<\/p>\n

There was her medical preceptor\u2019s hospitality and generosity, going above and beyond the normal requirements of simply supervising a student; the preceptor took steps to make Raiolo feel comfortable as she settled into her five-week clinical rotation in Crookston, Minnesota.<\/p>\n

There were the times she directly assisted during surgeries and other procedures, opportunities rarely afforded to a rotating PA student at busier clinics where medical residents and others are well ahead on the priority list.<\/p>\n

There were the conversations with her preceptor, who took the time and care to truly walk through an experience they just had with a patient to help Raiolo learn as much as she could from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cLearning from someone who has been doing this forever, you can\u2019t put a price on that. It\u2019s just the best,\u201d Raiolo says. \u201cTo have the space and time for these experiences, they\u2019re only available because I\u2019m out here in Crookston. It\u2019s priceless.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no coincidence that one of Raiolo\u2019s rotations as a student in the Augsburg PA program brought her to Crookston, a town of about 7,500 people nearly 300 miles northwest of Augsburg\u2019s Minneapolis campus. It\u2019s one of several rural and underserved communities where Augsburg is working to get students into clinical rotations. These foundational blocks in building true partnerships give students invaluable experiences and serve communities where there is a shortage of health care providers.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Katie Olsen<\/strong>, PA program staff member (left), and Vanessa Bester<\/strong>, PA program director (Photo by Courtney Perry)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOur president, Paul Pribbenow<\/strong>, has the saying of, \u2018Show up and do the work.\u2019 This is us truly doing that,\u201d says Associate Professor Vanessa Bester<\/strong>, the PA program\u2019s director since 2021. She says the program is committed to establishing long-term partnerships with clinics and giving students experiences with the barriers to health care across various communities.<\/p>\n

Augsburg\u2019s ability to do that work got a major boost earlier this year when the university secured a $300,000 health equity grant from the Minnesota Department of Health to train students to practice in rural and underserved communities, including through\u00a0telehealth services. The money helps students pay for transportation and cost of living expenses so they can spend more time living and working in these communities. The grant also funds Augsburg faculty and staff taking time to build stronger relationships and partnership models with medical providers.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do we prepare health care provider partners to train our students and to get what they need out of these programs? We\u2019re not swooping in once a year with five students. There\u2019s continuously someone from Augsburg,\u201d Bester says. \u201cIt\u2019s really about the long game and building those relationships and trust. \u2026 The more trust a community has in you, the more you\u2019re welcome and able to contribute.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Bester passes out socks at Augsburg Health Commons. (Photo by Courtney Perry)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While the grant was obtained by the PA program, it\u2019s also being used to help train students in Augsburg\u2019s\u00a0nursing, social work, music therapy, and clinical psychology graduate programs. That means Augsburg students are going into communities with a foundation of holistic care built across those programs, and they\u2019re using their experiences to, as Bester says, \u201ccontinue growing into change agents, recognizing barriers to health care, and helping build a better system.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAugsburg\u2019s health programs are really a powerhouse working together; the model of collaboration is really powerful and wonderful,\u201d Bester adds. \u201cThere\u2019s this concept of collaborative care that we develop in our students where we work together as a team, support that team-based care, and see that outcomes are so much better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Getting students where they\u2019re needed<\/h2>\n

Well-documented and discouraging health disparities persist in many rural and underserved communities across Minnesota and the United States. (Health disparities refer to differences in health status compared to the overall population, such as higher rates of disease, disability, chronic pain, and mortality.) Perhaps no number paints the contrast more painfully than the harsh gap in life expectancy: According to the International Journal of Epidemiology<\/a>, life expectancy in 2019 for rural men and women was nearly three years less than their urban counterparts across the U.S.<\/p>\n

Access to health care is a challenge for many rural populations. Although about one in five people in the U.S. live in rural areas, less than 10% of physicians practice there,\u00a0according to the American Hospital Association<\/a>. Beyond that, nearly 150 rural hospitals have closed since 2010, in part due to staffing shortages.<\/p>\n

Those shortages are a key part of why getting Augsburg students into rural clinics and hospitals is so important, Bester says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to build relationships with our partners so the community is part of the students\u2019 training. Does that guarantee they\u2019ll go practice there after graduation? Not necessarily, but the level of autonomy and feeling of connection may draw students back to rural communities when they are making that decision of where to work,\u201d she says, adding that the PA program has seen success in retention with its clinical partners in Little Falls, Minnesota. The $300,000 grant starting this year builds on the work of a previous grant that helped fund the development of a longstanding relationship between Augsburg and CHI-St. Gabriel\u2019s Health in Little Falls.<\/p>\n

Raiolo says that despite being \u201csuch a city person\u201d growing up, her time in Crookston has dramatically increased her interest in returning to a rural setting to practice medicine, citing the ability to provide holistic care and time to work more consistently with \u201cpeople as full people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople come from all over the area to get care in Crookston. It\u2019s so nice to get to know the people you\u2019re caring for and understand more fully their way of life and what their experiences are like,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Vanessa Amanor \u201923<\/strong>, PA student (Photo by Hayley Selinski)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

PA student Vanessa Amanor \u201923<\/strong> has had similar experiences: Born in Ghana and raised just west of Minneapolis, Amanor says she has been amazed during rotations in underserved communities\u2014more formally identified as federally designated health professional shortage areas\u2014in rural Sherburne and Morrison counties. Smaller clinics that are part of larger health systems often provide student training in and patient access to primary care, behavioral health, and addiction medicine. As a part of her training in clinics outside of St. Cloud and Elk River, Amanor saw the community connections that providers develop and the benefits of continuous care they have with their patients.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe provider I worked with in St. Cloud delivered a lot of these patients in Little Falls and was their family provider throughout their life, and now they struggle with addiction and he\u2019s their provider (for coping with addiction). It was just this amazing journey,\u201d she says, adding that she\u2019s planning on starting her career in a rural and\/or underserved community. \u201cI love the idea of being able to see people throughout their lives and help guide them through things. You build a sense of trust when you\u2019re with them for that period of time and see them that often. I\u2019m looking forward to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Grateful for these experiences\u2019<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s a sense of excitement and gratitude, Bester says, as Augsburg moves through the first of three years with grant funding from the Minnesota Department of Health. It helps to have so much momentum and experience from the initial grant-supported partnership with CHI-St. Gabriel\u2019s in Little Falls, which helped provide a proof of concept for how to match student training directly to addressing health inequities across Minnesota.<\/p>\n

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Raiolo practices technique in Augsburg’s PA program. (Courtesy photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Augsburg established from the previous grant a substance use disorder curriculum, so PA students were ready to obtain their Drug Enforcement Administration licensure and could prescribe suboxone to combat opioid dependence. Funding from the new $300,000 grant is helping ramp up training and develop a curriculum for telemedicine that will launch this fall. It is also paying for two telehealth stations on campus for students to practice and meet with patients during their rotations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest thing is that funding opportunities like this are so critical to address the disparities going on in our state,\u201d Bester says. \u201cThis is an excellent way for us to help facilitate that access and contribute to improving health in all of our state\u2019s communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Raiolo, getting to see firsthand the issues facing her neighbors in rural and underserved communities has been eye-opening. She knows there\u2019s plenty more to see and a lot more to learn in how she can help create better outcomes for her future patients.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m grateful for these experiences,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve seen more now of what people experience and understand more of what needs are out here.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s safe to say there are a lot more journal entries in her future.<\/p>\n

\n

Top image: Physician\u2019s Assistant Program Director\u00a0Vanessa Bester<\/strong> takes a visitor’s blood pressure at Augsburg Health Commons. (Photo by Courtney Perry)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s later in the evening, but Augsburg physician assistant student Alyssa Raiolo \u201923 happily takes the time to journal. Gratitude flows into her as she reflects on the experiences of her recent days. There was her medical preceptor\u2019s hospitality and generosity, going above and beyond the normal requirements of simply supervising a student; the preceptor <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":588,"featured_media":12827,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-12791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-stories","tag-fall-2023"],"wps_subtitle":"With new grant, Augsburg students provide health care to rural and underserved communities.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12791"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14229,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12791\/revisions\/14229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}