NEWS | MENTAL HEALTH “WHERE ARE ALL THE DOCTORS?,” CONTINUED... Spring is in the air and creativity is blooming everywhere!
Custer’s 37th Annual
Spring
Arts & Crafts Show One of a Kind Jewelry • Wearable Fiber Art • Mosaic Glass Original Paintings • Metal Garden Art • Woodworking • Photography Functional Pottery • Mixed Media • Specialty Foods and much more!
Spokane Fair & Expo Center
404 N. Havana Rd. • Spokane, WA • Free Parking
March 7 - 8 - 9, 2014 Friday 10 am - 8 pm
Saturday 10 am - 6 pm
Sunday 10 am - 4 pm
Admission $7.00 • Good all weekend! • Kids 12 & under free
Over 300 Professional Artists and Crafters!
Presented by:
509-924-0588 • www.CusterShows.com
Join us for the 2014 EWI Spring Conference hosted by EWI of Spokane
You’ll experience Leadership Education through our Academy of Leadership Course: “Finding Your Voice: An Experience in Leadership” Listen to engaging and relevant keynote presentations: Dr Lisa Brown, Washington State University Spokane: “Leadership: It’s Not Easy to Be Right!” Marty Dickinson, Sterling Bank: “When Change is Inevitable, Leadership and Influence are Key”
The problem is widespread, but especially Eastern Washington, but during the recession dramatic among psychiatrists, who can prescribe even those few spots were closed due to budget and manage the medications given credit for cuts. (While the program stopped accepting new allowing many with mental illness to live in the residents, it allowed those already participating to community instead of in hospitals. Psychiatrists finish. The last resident will graduate this year.) are aging — the portion of psychiatrists who are Now Layton, with help from Floura and 55 and older is about 15 percent higher than the others, is working to bring back the psychiatric average among other types of doctors — and few residency program, in hopes of improving access are ready to replace them as the number of medito care in the region and attracting more psychiacal students specializing in psychiatry dwindles. trists to Spokane. If accredited this spring, the Area psychiatrists say the profession suffers program will accept its first psychiatric residents from some stigma and the fact that, compared next year. Not only will they make likely candito other specialities, it’s among the lowest paid. dates for Spokane jobs once they’re finished, but Floura says he’s seen psychiatrists at Eastern, one they’ll be available to advise undergraduate preof Washington’s two state-funded adult psychiatmed students at the growing Riverpoint campus ric hospitals, take jobs at Sacred Heart or the VA east of downtown. Medical Center simply “You need that whole because the pay was pipeline, undergraduate higher, sometimes by through residency,” says as much as $80,000 Layton, who’s director of a year. the current program. “You have gone to lsewhere, providmedical school. You ers are working have student loans, with what they’ve this loan, that loan, EDITOR’S NOTE: This report is part of our got. The practice of and you have spent continuing “State of Mind” series delving into telepsychiatry, in which 10, 12 years of your the issue of mental health. Send feedback to doctors consult with life coming to this editor@inlander.com. For the entire series, patients over video chat, point,” he says. “You visit Inlander.com/stateofmind. is growing. Floura spends want to be rewarded one weekend a month for something for in Wenatchee, where he treats patients with no which you did the hard work.” regular access to mental health care. Even in the Along with increased pay, offering multiple face of funding and provider shortages, Frontier levels of medical education is a way to attract Behavioral Health, the region’s biggest provider psychiatrists, says psychiatrist and Washington of mental health services, has taken a bold step. State University professor Matt Layton. DocPeople looking for services are no longer told tors are likely to stay in the place where they about the next available appointment — which completed their residency, the in-hospital training may be weeks or months away — but to come in done after medical school. Yet despite estimates on the same day if they can. Since the change, that the region has a higher rate of serious demand for services has grown 20 percent. mental illness than the rest of Washington state, “It’s been enormously beneficial for those the count of psychiatry residency slots in the area individuals who get the care they need,” says is dismal. Central and Eastern Washington offer Frontier CEO Jeff Thomas, “but there’s not been less than one psychiatry residency slot for every 20 percent increase in federal or state funding 100,000 people, compared to a national average coming to our county, and therein lies the chalof 23 slots per 100,000 population and a ratio of lenge.” 18 per 100,000 on the western side of the state, While psychology has not faced the same according to a 2011 University of Washington shortages as psychiatry — in fact, psychology study of graduate education. Spokane’s slots students have struggled to find internships as were filled by University of Washington medical more people gravitate to the field — working students specializing in psychiatry who were therapists are seeing their own challenges. Both offered the chance to do half their residency in
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Anna Liotta, Resultance, Inc: “What Makes Each Generation Tick and What Ticks Them Off” Thursday – Saturday, April 24-26, 2014 For registration and more information, visit us at http://ewispokane.org/careers/spring-conference-2014 Hosted by the Red Lion Inn at the Park and Northern Quest Resort & Casino Sponsored By EWI Member Firms:
NEW SECTION
Health in the
Sign up today for early bird pricing through March 10th, 2014. 14 INLANDER FEBRUARY 27, 2014
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