South Carolina desperately needs more nursing professionals, especially in rural areas. The Nursing School is facing the challenge.
Posted on: December 14, 2020; Updated: December 14, 2020
By Chris Horn, [email protected], 803-777-3687
Like many patients at Jackie Baer’s health clinic in Johns Island, SC, Bill * had limited financial resources and a chronic health condition. Baer, a family nurse, managed to reduce Bill’s blood sugar, but arranged for him to go to an endocrinologist to put the finishing touch on diabetes control.
Imagine your shock when you saw Bill at your clinic weeks later and your blood sugar level skyrocketed. “I was shocked – it was the opposite of what I expected after sending him to a specialist,” says Baer, who obtained his doctorate in nursing from the University of South Carolina College of Nursing.
The mystery was quickly resolved when Bill confided that he could not afford the expensive medicine the endocrinologist had prescribed. And because he didn’t have a smartphone or computer, Bill didn’t do any virtual follow-up. Baer called the endocrinologist to explain the situation, suggested a cheaper prescription and asked him to forget about email and Skype, just call Bill to follow up and keep him informed.
“So, problem solved, but it worked. It is like that with many of my patients – they need defense, ”she says. That is why she works long hours and is often open at night to accommodate her patients’ working hours – many of them hourly paid service workers who cannot miss work during the day.
Baer’s patients definitely need it – and South Carolina desperately needs more dedicated nursing professionals like Baer, especially in rural and underserved communities, where primary health care providers are not as plentiful as in large cities and towns. wealthy suburbs. Palmetto State is estimated to need more than 800 additional primary care providers in the next 10 years just to keep up with the needs of its growing and aging population.
We have a great opportunity in South Carolina to improve healthcare just by ensuring that we have more providers in underserved areas.
Alicia Ribar, associate dean for academic affairs at the Faculty of Nursing
That is why the School of Nursing is working on a solution that could provide a model for all of South Carolina and perhaps even for the rest of the country, where the shortage of primary care providers is also great.
Funded with a grant from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, the college partnered with Cooperativa Eau Claire, the largest federally qualified health center in the state, to train a new wave of family nurses for underserved communities. The scholarship also aims to increase the diversity of the population of family nursing students and the workforce in the state.
“We have a great opportunity in South Carolina to improve health care just by ensuring that we have more providers in underserved areas,” said Alicia Ribar, associate dean for academic affairs at the faculty of nursing. “Almost all 46 counties in South Carolina are considered to be in need of primary care.”
Due to their training and the scope of their practice, family nursing professionals are a vital component in the state’s primary care provider network, especially in rural areas where new doctors are less likely to practice. New rules initiated in 2018 that govern practicing nurses in South Carolina have made it much easier for family medical nurses to establish collaborative partnerships with doctors. Now, a family nurse can join a doctor anywhere in the state; previously, both parties needed to be within 45 miles of each other, a requirement that used to be an obstacle for nursing professionals in remote communities. Through its donation, the Nursing School is recruiting graduate students from rural communities and offering scholarships for the master’s degree that leads him to become a family nurse.
“We are actively looking for people from rural areas, including RNs who are working in federally funded health clinics and those with diverse backgrounds to receive this scholarship funding,” said Sheryl Mitchell, ’99 BS, ’05 BSN, ’08 DNP, director of the faculty’s family nurse academic program. “We know that students who live in rural areas are more likely to return to these communities to work if they have the financial support they need to continue their studies.”
This is an overwhelming poverty here. I mean, if I talk about it a lot it makes me cry, the poverty that people don’t know.
Dale Barwick, FNP, Graduate School of Nursing
There have been other attempts to place family nursing professionals in rural and underserved areas, but it can be a struggle if the professionals are not from that community or do not grow up in a similar community. “We saw people spend a year or two and then go out in those situations,” explains Mitchell. “We really want to establish a long-term presence with our FNPs in these areas.”
This is what Dale Barwick, a graduate of the College of Nursing and a family nurse, did in Summerton, SC, where she opened a solo practice. The impoverished, small town was seven years without a primary care provider before Barwick’s arrival. Most of his patients are on Medicaid or Medicare, and many of them walk or ride a bicycle or motorized wheelchair to his office.
“This is an overwhelming poverty here. I mean, if I talk about it a lot, I keep crying, the poverty that people don’t know about, ”says Barwick. “I just try to focus on the fact that I’m here helping them, so at least I know that I’m making a difference.”
Before Barwick opened her clinic there, she says that many Summerton residents were using emergency rooms in nearby towns for routine health needs.
“Either they took a ride to the emergency room or called 911 to go to the emergency room in Manning because their medication was out and their blood sugar was 500 or their blood pressure was 230 by 120. So I cut in a lot of it because now they are coming here to check their blood pressure and do their labs and all the things that should be done to take care of these chronic diseases. ”
Understanding the nuances of care delivery in environments like Summerton is one of the objectives of the College of Nursing scholarship.
“By forming a partnership with the Cooperative Eau Clair, we have more control over our students’ residency experience”, says Ribar. “We can shape their experience with much more consideration through the cooperative and give them some exposure and learning opportunities that will help them succeed in the future.”
The aim of the School of Nursing is to place 60 new family nursing professionals in rural and underserved areas in the next four years. Danny Black is president and CEO of the SouthernCarolina Alliance, an organization that recruits the industry and works to improve the quality of life in several Lowcountry counties in South Carolina. He says the lack of primary health care providers makes his job difficult , but he is encouraged by the School of Nursing’s drive to hire more nurses.
“We no longer have home doctors to look after the local population,” says Black. “This is a concern for them and me, as I try to get companies to settle here and bring in high-paying jobs. They look around and say, ‘What are my medical options?’ If we can’t offer that, the industry won’t want to come here. And it is difficult for residents in rural counties to obtain the medical care that the Columbias, Greenvilles and Charlestons enjoy. ”
Serving a patient population that is in a rural or underserved area usually translates to some degree of financial sacrifice and usually means more hours of work. Tamieka Alston-Gibson can relate to both. Having earned a bachelor’s and postgraduate degree in nursing from the University of South Carolina, she now has a lone family nurse practice near Spartanburg called Visions Medical Health Care.
“We definitely serve the needy and care for uninsured patients,” says Alston-Gibson, who grew up in the small town of Estill, South Carolina. “My goal is to offer health equity because I truly believe that health is a human right. I try to make my community my priority and help everyone who is willing to accept my help. You have to have a heart for that. ”
* The patient’s name has been changed to preserve anonymity
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Topics: Alumni, Health Sciences, Faculty of Nursing