Officials Meet to Discuss Healthcare Worker Shortages

Bismarck, ND – A recent survey shows half of North Dakota high school students are interested in going into health careers but half of that half indicated more than one career of interest like business or agriculture. Dr. Patricia Moulton is an assistant professor at the Center for Rural Health at the University of North Dakota. She says the challenge here is to encourage those high school students and also some non-traditional students to help fill in the shortages in the health care workforce in the state.
A lot of our counties are designated as health professional shortage areas. In fact, 41 out of 53 of them are so many of our counties are experiencing some sort of crisis. In nursing, we're seeing vacancy rates that are indicative of a shortage. The other professions we don't really know a lot about. We've done a massive nursing shortage study over the years we've done a little for physician and dental but we really haven't investigated the other professions because we don't have funding to do so.
Moulton says health professions are experiencing crunches throughout the nation. And Mouton says the nursing shortage is not only a nationwide problem but a global problem. She says the biggest challenge is attracting nurses and other health care workers to rural areas
A couple years ago I had focus groups with nursing students and I was amazed because I had students say it was scary to go into a rural area and they don't understand it. So certainly programs designed to encourage students to experience those or give them experience during school would ease those fears and they would also become more familiar with rural areas.
Mitch Leupp (Loop) is the administrator of the Mountrail County Health Center in Stanley. Leupp has been in health care for over twenty years and he says it is more difficult now than ever to recruit workers to a rural area.
We only employ two physicians and a mid-level practitioner and at this point we are down one physician and have been recruiting for six months with only one physician that indicated any interest in coming to Stanley. And that's what we are hearing across the state especially for rural areas but it's also an issue for the bigger communities the more urban areas in North Dakota.
Dr. Mary Wakefield is the director of the U-N-D Center for Rural Health
Mary1: It isn't enough to just expect educators to produce more and think that is going to be a solution. It isn't enough to just think if we create the best working environments that's the solution to recruiting and retaining a health care workforce. All the strategies coming out of this meeting are going to take career counselors from grade school and high school match them to physicians and nurses in rural communities bring in hospital administrators economic development commission representatives are here at this meeting because we all recognize we've got a stake in this and there is no one magic bullet that is going to be the solution.
Wakefield says possible upcoming legislation may include expanding the state's current loan repayment program so other health care providers would be included not just physicians.
The good news is that we have loan repayment in North Dakota however we have an opportunity to expand it so that more physicians can participate and we have the opportunity to extend it to other high demand health care providers in North Dakota like nurses and physical therapists and so on.