Health care workforce needs trigger action
It's a looming problem: Minnesota will soon not have enough nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists and other health care providers to take care of the state's residents. Fed by increasing retirements, the provider shortfall is already hitting. Consider registered nurses; by 2020 the gap between supply and demand of RNs is forecast to grow to more than 15,000.
Higher education is key to addressing these provider shortfall forecasts. Colleges and universities are helping in several ways, from breaking through bottlenecks that limit the number of new providers who can be educated to rethinking how health care can best be delivered.
The efforts of Minnesota's private colleges and universities are particularly critical. We award more four-year health care degrees than either the University of Minnesota or the MnSCU system. In 2006 we had 624 undergraduate degree recipients from members of the Minnesota Private College Council; that figure does not include the sizable pre-professional program graduates, who are going on to pursue medicine and other advanced degrees. When private graduate programs are added in, close to 1,000 future health care providers graduate from 10 of our member institutions in a year.
When it comes to responding to the work force challenge, private colleges' unique contributions are tied to their responsiveness. Martha Witrak, dean of nursing, College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, pointed out how private colleges can be nimble about responding to emerging education needs. "It's important to the state to have private colleges be idea incubators for health care," she said.
Consider the partnership St. Scholastica has with Cerner Corp. to use its electronic health record (EHR). Faculty at St. Scholastica have developed this EHR into a robust, state-of-the-art teaching tool; more than 20 other colleges now use it as well. Helping advance the use of EHRs in higher education addresses an important need in health care, a need that is such a priority that it is part of a presidential mandate for improving quality and controlling costs.
The impact of private higher education on health care was demonstrated recently when the College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, announced the goal of increasing its health care graduates by 20 to 30 percent, tied to the reorganization of numerous separate programs into the new School of Health. After 120 years of educating a variety of health care providers, the new school will integrate training across disciplines and foster more partnerships for clinical education. Both will be key to addressing the state's work force challenges.
St. Catherine's ability to find new ways to increase the workforce was demonstrated in its work with Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Minneapolis. The college was dealing with bottlenecks to educating more students — the difficulty of finding clinical sites to host the students and the necessary faculty to teach them, explained Alice Swan, St. Catherine's associate dean for nursing. The hospital was interested in hiring more of the college's graduates, the likelihood of which increases when students get early exposure to the hospital. After working to find a response, two groups of students are now able to head over to Abbott Northwestern, instead of one. That's possible because the existing faculty member is now complemented by a staff nurse that the hospital frees up to lecture.
Similar partnering around learning opportunities can occur across the world, as well as across town, Swan said. "We can create capacity," she said. "I need faculty here creating curriculum to ensure we're meeting standards. Once we have that set, I can work with various partners to see that we can deliver that education where it is needed."
Bethel nursing students practice on SimMan™, a computerized human
Another key ingredient is technology. Bethel University, for example, recently purchased SimMan™ — a computerized human that can be used to simulate different health care needs. "This provides students with a safe place to practice providing nursing care in acute, life-threatening situations," said Sandy Peterson, Bethel nursing department chair. "And it recognizes the difficulty of getting quality clinical experiences every time students go into a clinical setting."
Students also need to be better prepared for how health care is changing. That's why Bethel is developing a new baccalaureate nursing curriculum that puts a greater emphasis on caring for under-served minority populations, the elderly and the very young, Peterson said. "Given the realities of health care, addressing those kinds of needs requires a student who is able to deal with greater ambiguity and complexity," she said.
New advanced education opportunities are also emerging in private higher education. St. Scholastica's existing doctorate of nursing program will be complemented this fall with a new one at St. Catherine's.
Despite all the effort to increase capacity, however, expanding and improving how future health care providers are educated cannot be the whole answer. Health care sources say we cannot afford to keep delivering care the same way; we need new models that will allow staff and resources to stretch farther. Swan predicted more emphasis on addressing the health of communities, working harder on prevention and helping people take a bigger role in their own health.
Rethinking how health care works is already part of what goes on in private higher education. Consider the Project Homeless Connect event in early October at the Minneapolis Convention Center, where St. Catherine's students provided health care services. Rather than waiting until people are in crisis and need to be taken to emergency rooms, Swan said students helped give appropriate preventive care to a whole population, providing everything from foot soaks to general health assessments.
Similar partnerships with schools, churches and clinics will continue to help private colleges prepare students — and our state — for the future.