A NECESSITY: Rural hospitals like Pulaski Memorial Hospital in Winamac, Ind., cater to a wide variety of folks from neighboring small towns. Health care access in these communities is crucial for farmers and other folks who can't simply set a day aside for an appointment.Allison Lynch
The nearest hospital that handles live births is an hour away from my house. What used to be a 20-to-30-minute drive to local hospitals for that same procedure is now a distant memory as small rural hospitals cut back on their capabilities and funnel folks to the city for medical work.
I knew this before I got pregnant. I would often joke about it, saying, "I don't want to have this baby on the drive to the hospital." But that fear came true when I was turned away from the hospital in the early stages of labor, advised to simply "labor at home" and come back when I was further along. Luckily, we made it there in time when it was time for the baby to come.
And now, with a baby here, this issue seems compounded. His appointments are an hour away. All the specialists are an hour away. A quick question to his doctor typically results in -- you guessed it -- an hour drive to have him examined. The travel sure adds up.
My hour-long drive to the hospital is laughable to folks who need to set an entire day aside to simply attend a routine doctor appointment. This is reality for some Hoosiers in even more remote parts of Indiana.
Don't expect change
Folks from my generation are not necessarily flocking to rural areas, so I wouldn't expect a boom in rural medical services. My brother, Ryan Lund, is a unicorn in this field. A student at the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy, he hopes to land a job in a rural hospital when he graduates. His farming roots fuel his passion for small-town settings.
"I want to work in a rural setting because you work with smaller patient loads and provide more individualized care," he said.
But this isn't the trend. Ryan is only one of a few students in his class with plans to head out of the urban setting. Health care access in rural settings continues to fade.
"There's an urbanization of health care access," Ryan explained. However, although students who want to head to rural settings are few and far between, they do exist.
Push for education
Here's the problem: Few of Ryan's classes at UW-Madison focus on rural health care. There is a specialization for his degree called the "Rural Health Program," where he is required to complete a project in a specialized course and have a rotation in a rural hospital. But that program doesn't get many takers.
Experience is crucial to developing the right skill set for rural settings. And Ryan's story began when he started working as a pharmacy technician in high school at our small-town pharmacy alongside our grandmother.
I watched his knowledge about medications and dosage explode. His people skills continued to grow. He catered to a small pool of folks from our rural area. The connections he made resurface today as kind greetings when he sees the people he used to serve.
It takes real-world experience to fuel the passion for small-town care. There's pride in Ryan's greeting to fellow peers and scholarship donors: "Hello! I'm Ryan Lund and I'm a pharmacy student. I want to work in a rural hospital."
Perhaps, we should start encouraging youth in our small communities to seek part-time jobs in rural health care while they're still in high school. Or maybe universities need to consider adding and promoting more courses that focus on rural health care and the unique experiences and challenges that students may encounter.
Not talking about won't get us anywhere. The resources will continue to dwindle, and that drive for a routine physical will become longer. Encourage the youth in your life to explore their passions in this field. And find ways to spread the message that rural health care needs a rewrite.