MultiCare offers a training program for nursing assistant and medical assistant students. Courtesy MultiCare
Want to learn health care? You don’t have to go far Region boasts plenty of training opportunities By Tracy Damon Marketing Correspondent
T
he nationwide worker shortage in pretty much every field is nothing new to the health care industry. For decades, experts have said there aren’t enough doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals to keep up with a growing population that needs these services. This situation is expected to get worse: by 2030, the World Health Organization is predicting a shortfall of 15 million health care workers worldwide. To combat this, colleges and health care companies are looking for more ways to partner in training and hiring skilled health workers at all levels.
This includes the Inland Northwest, where there are innovative efforts taking place to recruit future workers in medical fields. Some providers are even teaming up to develop a pipeline directly from school to employment, or at least connecting potential industry workers with various tools to be part of this world. One example is Washington State University, which offers undergraduate, graduate and professional programs through its College of Nursing. In early 2023, WSU and Providence announced a partnership to establish the first pediatric medical residency in
Eastern Washington. The goal of this program is to improve overall children’s health care in the area and to foster aspiring doctors from WSU’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine. Six residents per year will be admitted to the three-year program, with the first residents scheduled to join the program in summer 2024. Training will be provided in pediatric specialties, community pediatrics, child advocacy, adolescent medicine, developmentalbehavioral pediatrics and mental health. This program is based primarily at Providence Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital with outpatient experiences at pediatric clinics throughout the community. WSU also partners with the University of Washington’s School of Medicine on a medical education program to increase the ability of both schools to attract students. Through this program, students spend the first two years of classes on the WSU Spokane campus; with the last two years of training at a WSU campus in Everett, Spokane, Tri-Cities or Vancouver. “Students learn in a variety of hospitals and health care settings, allowing them to receive training in the kinds of environments where they will ultimately practice as physicians,” Kim Blakeley, Director of Strategic Marketing & Communications for UWSOM, wrote in an email. Through this program, students can take advantage of a variety of training opportunities, including in Graduate Medical Education; post-doctoral training and biomedical graduate education programs in Research Graduate Education; rehabilitation medicine, occupational therapy, prosthetics and orthotics, physical therapy, and rehabilitation science in Rehab Medicine Degrees, and others. In addition, UWSOM has a five state program known as WWAMI, an acronym corresponding with the first initials of the state served by the school; Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. “Through partnering with universities in each of the states, duplicative costs are reduced, and students are able to get a
UW medical degree in their home state. When WWAMI was started, back in the early 1970s, there weren’t any other medical schools in the WWAMI states,” Blakeley said. In Washington, the home base for the program is the UW Seattle campus in western Washington and Gonzaga University in Eastern Washington. Other partners include the University of Wyoming, University of Alaska Anchorage, Montana State University, and University of Idaho. “All students, regardless of where they reside for their Foundations (basic initial) training, are UWSOM students and receive MD degrees from UW,” said Blakeley. Providence Healthcare’s Certified Nursing Assistant Training Program is a collaboration with Spokane’s Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center. Participants gain on-the-job work experience, classroom education, and clinical training throughout the six-week program. Training consists of simultaneous classroom and lab training for the first three weeks, then clinical rotations and review sessions the following three weeks. Students graduate eligible to work in direct patient care alongside medical providers in both acute and long-term care facilities. MultiCare Health System-Inland Northwest Region partners with Sparrow Healthcare Education and COPE Health Solutions on medical assistant and nurse assistant education programs. Sparrow teaches the course work outside of western Washington while COPE teaches in the Puget Sound region. “The courses in both regions are essentially the same to comply with the standard of the state for those occupations,” said Kevin Maloney, who works in marketing for MultiCare. About 30 students per year go through the medical assistant program and about 60 complete the nurse assistant program annually. Students are paid to participate in the education phase of the program and come out with a job waiting for them with MultiCare. “They agree to work for MultiCare for