RCHC Community Project Abstracts

Back to subject search page or search by preceptor site Educating the Future Project Date: 2/9/2009 From a health care perspective, one of the most difficult tasks in a rural setting is recruiting new physicians to the area. Grants Pass has a population around 30,000 with a wide variety of specialists to serve the population. The problem: physicians are aging and there isn't anyone willing to replace them. It has gotten so bad that the general surgeons are threatening to cut weekend call all together. The greatest hope lies in the community's youth who are likely to return to their hometown upon completion of their training. I was invited to Grants Pass High School to teach the students in the advanced medical skills class how I became interested in medicine, what I did to get into medical school and what life in school is like. It was my goal to demonstrate how much fun medicine is, and how they can go about getting into medical school. To show how much fun it is, I used hypothetical trauma scenarios and asked them what to do. The next day, I brought in 12 pigs feet along with suture material and taught them how to suture using sterile techniques. Through this process, I learned how a physician is not solely a healer, but an educator as well. It is a physician's duty to educate the community. I used the classroom to educate students about medicine, and it was clear that more than a couple of interests were sparked. Recruiting and Retaining Physicians in Coos Bay: Assessment of Medical Student Interest in Rural Medicine and Rural Physician Perspectives on Their Practice Project Date: 2/11/2008 Background. Coos Bay is a rural city on the southern Oregon coast that struggles to recruit and retain sufficient physicians. The purpose of this study is to assess medical student rural interest and Coos Bay physician perspectives as they relate to recruiting and retention. Methods. A literature search was conducted to identify common recruiting and retention issues. Physician recruiters and practicing physicians at NBMC were interviewed to identify unique issues and their commitment to this community. Finally, OHSU medical students were surveyed to assess their past and current level of interest in rural medicine. Findings. Key to physician happiness in is their practice. Most of the physicians interviewed are planning on retiring in Coos Bay. Medical student rural interest correlates with increasing student age, male gender, and rural upbringing. Specialties correlated with rural interest are family medicine, emergency medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, and pediatrics. Medical students showed increased rural interest following their rural clerkship. Conclusions. Successful medical practice is key to physician happiness and thus long term retention. OHSU’s third year rural clerkship is a great tool to increase interest in rural medicine. However, it can be further optimized by addressing housing issues, boredom, and misperceptions. Increasing High School Student Awareness of Health Careers in Union County Project Date: 3/19/2007 Although 20% of Americans live in rural areas, only 9% of the nation’s physicians practice there. Studies have shown that medical students raised in medically underserved areas tend to set up practice in such areas. Unfortunately, students from rural areas lack exposure to health care careers and practice opportunities. The purpose of this project was to develop and implement a rural outreach curriculum to help increase high school student awareness of health careers. The project goals were accomplished by visiting several high schools in Union County to give an interactive lecture designed to inspire students to enter the field of medicine. The project also included development of a student handout regarding age-specific OHSU and AHEC sponsored career exploration summer programs, available preceptorships, and available funding for high school students interested in a health career. The goal of the project is to reinforce the OHSU mission of attracting Oregonians to the School of Medicine and ultimately supplying all of Oregon with sufficient numbers of qualified health care professionals. Recruitment and Retainment of Rural Physicians: the difficulties found in the Frontier community of Grant County, Oregon. Project Date: 1/1/2007 Recruiting and retaining physicians in rural areas is an ongoing problem in the United States today. Physicians are trained in urban areas and often prefer to remain there to practice creating difficulty in recruiting to rural communities. If a physician does choose to practice in a rural setting they often feel isolated and overworked and usually remain for only a short time. This report analyzes the recruitment process of the Blue Mountain Hospital and a private clinic in Grant County, Oregon and identifies the difficulties in recruiting and retaining physicians in that area. Data were gathered from journal articles and interviews with local physicians and the hospital administrator. Grant County uses a variety of physician recruitment firms and word of mouth advertising, although in the last five years three of the new doctors have come through the Oregon Area Health Education Center. In the last eighteen years Grant County has had sixteen different physicians, each of them remaining only four years on average. In addition to lack of medical student exposure, local physicians identify various lifestyle and professional issues as barriers to recruiting and retaining physicians. I attempt to offer solutions to these issues including more selective recruiting and improved strategies to expose medical students to rural medicine Recruitment of rural physicians: the challenges of a hospital and a private clinic in Klamath Falls, Oregon Project Date: 9/12/2005 A present and future healthcare concern facing the United States is the shortage of physicians practicing in rural areas. Doctors disproportionately prefer urban-suburban practices, and this makes the recruitment of rural physicians a challenging task. This report documents the hospital and clinic recruitment process of the rural town of Klamath Falls, Oregon. Data were gathered from interviews with the physicians involved in the recruitment process at the Klamath Falls hospital and private clinic, and from published journal articles. The strategies for recruiting included hiring a recruiting service and establishing a local residency program and expanding medical student clerkship programs. The recruitment incentives the hospital and clinic offer to candidates include higher salaries, assistance in setting up a practice, establishing a clientele and assistance with spousal employment. Besides attracting physician candidates with the beautiful environment, physicians are drawn to Klamath Falls because of the low cost of living, the broader scope of the medical practice, the casual lifestyle and the lack of traffic congestion. Nonetheless, the recruitment is low due to the complaints of increased on-call hours, low reimbursement and no educational loan support. I recommend two broad strategies for increasing physician recruitment. First, Klamath Falls should emphasize its stunning natural surroundings. More importantly, Klamath Falls should increase its efforts to reach out to rural training programs nationwide. Who becomes a rural physician? Characterizing the Physicians of Oregon’s South Coast Project Date: 9/29/2003 There have been efforts to characterize rural physicians in hopes of correcting the shortage of health care in rural areas, and several generally accepted assumptions have emerged. This project aims to determine if these “basic truths” apply to rural Oregon, particularly the South Coast area surrounding the community of Coos Bay. A survey addressing these questions was sent to 99 physicians with a 46% response rate. To further investigate the belief that rural experiences increase interest in rural practice, an analysis of OHSU graduates before and after the implementation of the rural clerkship was undertaken. The data presented indicates that many of the accepted truths do not in fact hold up for the populations investigated. Physician Satisfaction in Coos Bay and Eugene, OR. A survey of family physicians, and internists with and without hospital roles. Project Date: 5/6/2002 Due in large to financial pressures and lifestyle issues, a growing number of managed care organizations, hospitals and large physician-ownned groups are hiring "hospitalists" whose responsibility is to take care of inpatients, freeing up other prmary care physicians to concentrate on outpatient practice. Bay Clinic in Coos Bay, Or. is a group practice of internists where one of the internist wants to be hired by the clinic as a voluntary hospitalist, providing inpatient care for the remaining 9 internists. This request has been met with both support and opposition. The intent of this project is to compare satisfaction of the traditioal physician taking call and physicians with office-based practices only by administering a survey of physician satisfaction. The total response rate was 31% (Bay Clinic, Coos Bay:8/9, North Bend Clinic, Coos Bay:10/10, Oregon Medical Group and Peace Health Group: Hospitalists 2/12, Pysicians w/o hospital role=6/29 Physicians w/hospital role=3/34 (total 11/75). Results: Physicias without call reported the highest level of satisfaction across all categories: practice environment, hrs. worked/week vs. time for personal/home life interests and income vs. number of hours worked. Family physicians also reported high levels of satifaction compared to internists or physicians taking call. There is a need for further surveys of physician satisfaction in this new paradigm of hospitalist/office-based physician as this trend continues to increase. Back to subject search page or search by preceptor site