Hospital lures rural doctors
Hospital lures rural doctors with unusual offer
By ROXANA HEGEMAN, Associated Press
–
21 hours ago
ASHLAND, Kan. (AP) — The hospital had lost the last doctor in a
succession of those who came to the remote Kansas town and left again. A
sole physician assistant kept watch over the 24-bed facility and its
adjacent nursing home. It was on the verge of closing.
Then
officials at the Ashland Health Center, seeking to reverse the drain of
talent symptomatic of what happens across rural America, embraced an
unorthodox approach to bring doctors back.
All employees, from
maintenance people to physicians, get eight paid weeks off each year
that they can use to do missionary work in other countries. The idea:
people willing to care for the sick and suffering in developing nations
might be content to do the same in a town of 855 people, more than two
hours away from the nearest Starbucks.
The public hospital began
advertising that benefit — which employees can use for other volunteer
work or any purpose they choose, not just mission work — in Christian
publications and at Catholic-run medical schools. Today, the hospital
has a chief medical officer, a medical technologist, a nursing director,
a nurse practitioner and other staff drawn by its so-called
mission-minded recruiting. It's now looking for nurses, a dentist and a
physical therapist.
"I was not surprised by the differences
between rural Kansas and rural Zimbabwe. What surprised me were the
similarities," said the hospital's 32-year-old administrator, Benjamin
Anderson, who has been the catalyst for the program. "I am not saying
rural Kansas is the same as a developing country, I am simply saying
rural Kansas and rural Zimbabwe struggle with some of the same
challenges — they just look different."
In both places, people have difficulty accessing medical care, face housing problems and can feel isolated.
Situated
in the vast prairie of southwestern Kansas, Ashland is a sleepy cattle
ranching and oil town filled with modest homes and an aging population.
The major employers left are the schools and the hospital. It has a
small grocery store, but no gas station. Walking anywhere in town takes
10 minutes.
Anderson, who's gone on missions to Zimbabwe since
coming to Ashland in 2009, was convinced the compassionate health care
providers he sought could best be found among physicians with a passion
for mission work in developing countries.
A few months ago, Dr.
Dan Shuman, a 43-year-old family physician, was working at a health care
center and a multi-specialist medical group in Georgetown, Texas. Then
he heard from a friend about a little hospital in Kansas and the mission
opportunities that came with it.
Although Shuman had a
comfortable practice caring for well-insured retirees, he missed the
medical work he had once done in places like Haiti and Mexico. Shuman
and his wife, a social worker, moved in July with their five children to
Ashland.
"Everywhere in the country we have problems with health
care," Shuman said. "But this was a place that was really seeking to
make a difference."
Ashland's recruitment model was developed with
faculty at the private Via Christi medical residency program in
Wichita, part of the nonprofit Catholic health care system, where
students can complete a three-year family medicine residency. It also
offers an International Family Medicine Fellowship, a one-year
post-residency program geared to providing health care in developing
countries.
Dr. Scott Stringfield, its recruiter, has seen more
medical students wishing to do mission work, both in developing nations
and domestically in inner cities. Last year, 16 percent of applicants
indicated interest in such work. This year, it was 33 percent.
Some
doctors have taken the initiative in seeking mission-friendly jobs.
Four former Via Christi fellows, two of whom were married to other
doctors, sent letters to hospital administrators in 25 states offering a
package deal: They would move to a town with a hospital in need in
exchange for each getting three months off on a rotating basis annually
for mission work. All six ended up in New Hampton, Iowa, a town of
3,500.
"If we can use medicine as a tool for us to share the
gospel of Christ with people that is really what drives us," Dr. John
Epperly said in a phone interview. "We are all going to have bodies that
are aging and getting sick and I hope we can prolong that to some
extent with medicine. But in the end what is important, I think, is what
is eternal and that is what we have been focused on — whether it is
working with farmers in northeastern Iowa or whether it is working in
Zimbabwe at a bush hospital."
Among Ashland's new hires are Lacey
Mollel and her husband, Enkaiye. As the child of missionaries in
Tanzania, she grew up "playing in the bush in the middle of nowhere"
with the boy who would become her husband. She came back to the U.S. for
college, and Enkaiye, a former Masai warrior, followed later.
The
couple left Indianapolis to work at the Ashland hospital — she as a
certified nurse assistant, he as a groundskeeper — after her uncle, a
pastor in Ashland, told them about the opportunity.
Lacey Mollel said they would not have left Indianapolis "unless you feel some calling or purpose in what you are doing."
Clark
County Deputy Sheriff Robert Canton used to tell friends if anything
ever happened to him not to send him to the local hospital. He lives
just a couple of blocks away from the Ashland facility, but thought he
couldn't get good care there. Two months ago, he went to the hospital's
emergency room with heart problems and came away impressed.
Now, he says, he tells his fellow deputies, "Take me there."