BVU rural medicine program exposes students to local health care

Buena Vista University is using its rural medicine program to show students what health care looks like in Buena Vista County and to make that path a little less costly. Through URMED, Jilly Janssen and Owen Stansberry spent three weeks in May Term shadowing physicians, watching procedures and meeting patients at Buena Vista Regional Medical Center and Pocahontas Community Hospital.

The program gives each participant a $3,000 stipend funded by BVU and partner hospitals, money that helps offset medical-school application costs. That support matters in a state where the physician shortage is especially acute. The Iowa Medical Society says Iowa ranks 44th nationally for patient-to-physician ratio, and it has warned that rural clinics are losing doctors without stronger payment reform and recruitment efforts.

For Janssen and Stansberry, the internship was about more than observation. They saw how small-town doctors build trust over time with patients and families, and they got direct patient interaction and mentorship from local providers. Dr. Brittney Dinkel said one of the biggest lessons for both students was the personal connection rural physicians make with their patients. Stansberry said a one-on-one conversation with a patient receiving treatment for Alzheimer’s was especially meaningful because it helped him better understand the role a doctor can play beyond the textbook. Janssen said the program strengthened her commitment to medicine and made her more confident that rural Iowa is where she hopes to practice someday.

URMED has been part of BVU’s answer to the workforce gap since 2008, when biology professor Rick Lampe and Buena Vista Regional Medical Center Foundation director Brad Strader created it. BVU has said a strong 2009 pre-med class that sent seven graduates to medical school helped push the effort forward. The university also has said the program has helped dozens of students prepare for careers as physicians, specialists, nurses and physician assistants. In 2015, BVU said the program was then in its seventh year and included a white-coat ceremony, and a 2022 university story called that year’s internship the 14th URMED effort.

The pipeline has already reached local practice. BVU has said Buena Vista Regional Medical Center had five family practice providers who were BVU alumni, and the university has highlighted former URMED participants who went on to internal medicine, family medicine and physician assistant work. Pocahontas Community Hospital, a city-owned 25-bed critical access hospital serving Pocahontas County, shows why that matters close to home, with emergency care, surgery, acute care, rehabilitation and specialty clinics all depending on enough clinicians to stay open. As Iowa Medical Society leaders continue to push retention and recruitment solutions through Operation I.O.W.A., the question in Buena Vista County is whether programs like URMED can do more than inspire students. The real test is whether they can keep enough of them in rural Iowa years later.