Developing our Workforce: Residency Program Helps Fill Provider Gaps

Developing our Workforce: Residency Program Helps Fill Provider Gaps

For clinicians, hands-on experience is everything when it comes to making a successful transition from education to patient care. When all the pieces come together, everybody wins: residents become outstanding primary care providers and more patients gain broader access to better care.

Thanks to partial funding from Presbyterian Healthcare Foundation (PHF) and a $3.2 million, four-year Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) grant, Presbyterian’s Advanced Practice Clinician (APC) Residency Program provides newly graduated Family Nurse Practitioners and Certified Nurse Midwives with extra support, training and guidance in their first year as new providers. This approach facilitates their successful transition to a new professional role and focuses on developing outstanding primary care providers. The program emphasizes increasing access to quality primary care in rural and underserved areas and newly graduated APCs are helping to fill those gaps.

Clifton Duncan, MSN, FNP-C, is one of those providers. A nurse since 2007 and a Nurse Practitioner for two years, he completed the year-long residency program in 2021 and is now a Family Medicine APC at Presbyterian Medical Group (PMG)-Las Estancias in southwest Albuquerque.

“I think the experience is invaluable,” Clif says. “Coming out of most nurse practitioner programs is quite a learning curve. There’s just no substitute for getting that extra hands-on experience.”

As word of the program’s success spreads, PMG practices have begun to actively recruit residents, creating a clear pipeline of providers. Because residency program graduates are often hired by PMG, the program also helps individual clinics reach their hiring goals, which can be especially challenging in rural and underserved areas.

“With this program, we’ve been able to ramp up providers much quicker, within six months,” says Angela Gallegos-Macias, MD, Medical Director-Isleta. “The graduates are outstanding, very well trained and ready to carry a panel of patients. Clifton is truly a testimony to the excellent training he received during his residency.”

The Foundation’s support has been incredible and has helped us sustain a big, important project. Without it, we may have lost the program due to devastating budget cuts because of COVID. Their role has been so critical to helping us help those who will take care of those we serve.”

Clifton with one of his lead preceptors, Jovana Ochoa, MD, at Lincoln County Medical Center.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

When HRSA grant funding ends in July 2023, Presbyterian will fund and manage the program internally, pursuing accreditation as it does with all other residency and fellowship programs. That’s why a recent allocation from PHF is critical to the program’s future success. An internal pilot program is currently underway to see how the current program can be modified to meet the need for additional providers and reduce the operational costs of running it.

“The benefits of a program like this cross a lot of areas,” says Lori Galves, Manager, Clinical Research Finance Administration. “It not only addresses the provider shortage, provider satisfaction, and has financial benefits; from a community health perspective, we can train these new providers to look for social determinants of health and provide focused training for health issues that may be prevalent in their communities, like diabetes or substance use disorders.”