Transcription:
All about West Central Illinois AHEC

Melanie Cole (Host): The West Central Illinois AHEC or Area Health Education Center's Network Program serves 17 counties in West Central Illinois to promote opportunities for those interested in learning about and exploring health careers, retaining healthcare professionals in rural and underserved areas, promoting health careers in those same areas and working with communities to improve overall health. Such an important   Welcome to Say Yes to Good Health with Memorial Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole and joining me is Mary Jane Clark. She's the West Central Illinois, AHEC Director and DIP, ACLM Certified Lifestyle Medicine nurse. Mary Jane, I'm so glad to have you with us. As I said in my intro, what an important need this is. Tell us a little bit about AHEC. What is that?

Mary Jane Clark, MS, RN, CHES®, CHWC® (Guest): Okay. Perfect. Thank you for having me today. I really appreciate that. The Area Health Education Center was developed to help grow your own if you will, as far as improving the healthcare workforce in rural and underserved areas. And so that's what we focus on a lot is how we promote, train and retain healthcare workers in our region.

Host: That's fantastic. It's so needed really all over the country, but for regions to do this as so important. So, what kinds of opportunities are we talking about here? What's available for those that are interested in learning about and exploring health careers?

Mary Jane: Well, we have lots of opportunities for students. We offer job shadowing, that helps them learn about different careers that they might be interested in. We have some virtual job shadowing platforms that we put in through COVID so that students could still figure out maybe what they want to do. One of the things is we tell students it's just as important to figure out what you don't want to do as what you want to do. And then really learn about things through scrub exposures. We partner throughout the region with others that have the same mission or a similar mission to provide opportunities for them to explore different health careers. We did some virtually on Friday afternoons during COVID so that we could still keep kids interested and learning about them.

There are some health career camps that are provided at different locations that we help sponsor and work with those. And then just doing some career planning, working with health career clubs, if they have science clubs or things like that in the areas, then we would be happy to come and talk through what the different opportunities are in healthcare.

And one of the things that we tell students is that it's not just about being a doctor or a nurse. There are so many different team members in our healthcare world that make our facility run. And we want kids to explore all those different opportunities.

Host: There are so many, it is absolutely a burgeoning field. So, tell us about some of the pre college pipeline activities, community immersion experiences. I love that. Tell us about some of those experiences that you have and the activities that you've set up.

Mary Jane: Okay. So, some of the community immersion experiences that we have through AHEC, those are statewide programmings that we participate in. And then some of them are hosted here at our facility at Memorial Hospital. And so we do three to five day experiences in rural and underserved areas to help students understand the rewarding behaviors and the culture in working in a small facility versus working in a large facility and then helping them understand what some of the challenges are and how much they're needed in these areas. So we have, the rural health experiences. We also have some rural health professions summer preceptorships, so that students can work together for six weeks, interdisciplinary fields, maybe somebody is interested in pharmacy. Maybe somebody's interested in nursing, maybe somebody's interested in being a physician. So, how those different team members would work together in the healthcare setting.

Host: Well, that's one of the most important aspects of having done these shows for so long. Mary Jane, you know, in my field, it was just pretty much all separate, but we've all come together now with nutrition and athletic training and physical therapy and exercise, physical, all of these things together. Now tell us a little bit about why you feel that multidisciplinary approach is really what's taking over the healthcare industry.

Mary Jane: Well, I think a lot of that is we're finding that we have better patient outcomes when we all work together. You can't work in silos and especially in rural or underserved areas where there's limited resources, we all have to work together. Communication is key. And healthcare has become more about customer service in a way. And so we want to make sure that we give patients the best experience. And part of that is that we work together as a team.

Host: It is, it really is. And what's important when these people are looking at careers in the healthcare field, and there are so many, and I think even these days, Mary Jane, people can create their own niches. And they can see where a certain need is offered and even create their own niches for this. But what's important to note when considering the issue of retaining healthcare professionals in rural and underserved areas? Tell us a little bit about why that is a little different and so important.

Mary Jane: Well, in some areas of healthcare, you specialize, extremely minute areas and you're right. You can create a niche for yourself. But does that fit into what the population needs? Healthcare has become more influenced by population health and what we need overall. And I think part of that is identifying the community needs, what is needed in the area. When you're altruistic, you want to help people. You want to do what's best for others. You have to think about that. We've had students that come through and they want to be a cardiologist, and you may serve a rural area, but you may not live and work in a rural area where they have a small hospital.

So again, it's thinking about what is needed in those areas where we need family practice docs. We need nurses who are willing to work in all different departments and be fluent in those different areas. It's different. We don't see the same thing every day necessarily either, but in urban settings you might just be an ortho nurse or just a cardiac nurse. And that's not the case in small and rural.

Host: Well, what an interesting point that you bring up. So, while you're telling us about the what are some of the needs, where do you see some challenges or gaps? Where would you like to see some of these young people that are looking at careers in the healthcare field gravitating to, as you mentioned, nursing, and there are so many aspects of nursing. I mean, they just cover the complete spectrum of the healthcare field. Where do you see some of the needs?

Mary Jane: Well, as our population ages, so does our healthcare workforce. And so we're going to need people in all different areas of healthcare, whether it is behavioral health, whether it is respiratory therapy, ultrasound techs or radiology techs, what are some of those positions and then figuring out what you're good at and we see a lot of needs related to not just doctors and nurses. We can always use nursing staff. And I think we also need to understand that in urban settings, the cost of living is different. There's so many quality of life issues. With some of those things that we want, kids that are from our rural areas to come back and work in our rural areas.

We want to make sure that they are able to get high quality jobs in a field makes sense for them. And then like, just like you mentioned that you weren't cut out to set in a lab, and figure that out, I want students to figure that out too. And so if we can help in any way have students try things and see things, and yes, I can definitely see myself in this area versus some other area, that is extremely important in them learning about the healthcare fields that are available to them. Because most of the time when we say, do you want a job in healthcare? No, I don't want to be a nurse and I'm not going to be a doctor. But there's so much more.

Host: There's so much more.

Mary Jane: And even, non health careers, in the healthcare setting, we hire people who are accountants, who are business-minded, who are working in IT, who are working in all these different areas, they're good with their hands. Maybe they'd be a great in maintenance, you know, it takes all of those different people to make our healthcare system work. And so we want to make sure people know that there are great jobs in healthcare, whether you are clinical or nonclinical.

Host: Well, what a great point that you made. And it's interesting because for people listening, I started out personal training and in cardiac rehab, and now I'm in medical journalism. So, you just never know where your careers in the healthcare field will take. Now tell us a little bit about improving the health of your overall community, because I feel that is one of the most important aspects. As you mentioned, the aging population. Smoking cessation, overall health, learning about exercise and nutrition, all of these healthy lifestyle behaviors and they can help with mental health as well. So, speak a little bit for us, Mary Jane, about some of the initiatives to improve the overall health and where you see careers in that department.

Mary Jane: Absolutely. Well, I'm a Certified Health and Wellness Coach, Certified Health Education Specialist, and then my Board Certification is in Lifestyle Medicine and those pieces all play a huge component, whether you are a nursing student, whether you're a pre-med student, whether you're a high school student, all those things come together in self care. It comes into learning how to take care of yourself. Because in healthcare we are busy taking care of other people, and sometimes we don't do a very good job of taking care of ourself. The other thing is, is we work in the world of sick and so healthcare is moving in the direction of prevention and taking responsibility and ownership for our own healthcare needs. Making sure that we are hitting all those dimensions of self care and wellness. We're getting our regular checkups. We are controlling those chronic diseases. There's been tons of research that's coming out recently about how, what we put into our bodies influences some of those gene expressions and things that happen.

And so we need people on the research end. We need people in the trenches, but then we also need people to take care of themselves. And so, there's a lot to that. I think the shift has been made in healthcare to where it's not just taking a pill. There's so much more that we can do ourselves to help us stay healthy and just really embrace that concept of community health, community engagement, how we can take ownership for that.

We can take care of ourselves and we still need providers and nurses and all those things, but there's so much we can do for ourselves. So, part of AHEC's role is working in those community health initiatives. And so we work on a lot of different things and try to keep abreast of the different issues that our communities are working on.

So, if we can assist in any way with education. We can assist with community education. We offer mental health first aid as one of those programs that we do, and we work with trainers to make that available to community members, to others, for both youth and adult mental health first aid, so if there's things that we can do on an education end for communities and communities preparing for their future, programming education, any of those things to help them. That's part of our role as well.

Host: It's such a great role and before we wrap up to go to break, do you even help with job placement? If they go through these initiatives and they get involved with AHEC, do you help them find a job?

Mary Jane: Well, we do help with internships, preceptorships, and those things are almost like a job interview, when you're in a facility and you are job shadowing or you're doing any kind of clinical experience, those providers, those that are working with you are seeing if you would be a good fit for their organization.

So, we do offer nursing internships. We do offer some of those clinical placement pieces to encourage people to be in our facility and see what we're like and how they might see them fitting in. We also offer AHEC scholars program, which is huge for learning about how we work together in our professionally practice transformation. What some of those cutting edge things are, how we're culturally competent to the communities that we're serving. We talk about social determinants of health, but then they also get some clinical job shadowing or internships and those kinds of things. So, then our goal for those students are that they would be workforce ready when they get done with that program and then kind of tracking to see where they end up.

Host: Health care opportunities are abundant and so important right now. So, Mary Jane, I'm so glad to have you with us. Tell us your story. How and why did you become a lifestyle nurse? Tell us a little bit about you.

Mary Jane: Okay. Well, I started in healthcare at a very young age. The age of 14, I started as a volunteer. So, any of those who are interested in health care volunteens, volunteer programs for teenagers is a great way to learn about what you want to do and what you don't want to do. I worked my way up. I was a nursing assistant, a certified nursing assistant. I've worked in lots of different healthcare settings, whether it's homemaking services, nursing homes, and physician's offices. So, it gave me a feel for all the different areas within healthcare as I began my journey. I finished nursing school, worked in inpatient, worked in the clinic setting.

And then, as I continued with my training, I found I had a passion for education and training people. And so I finished my master's degree in health education, with an emphasis in community health and became a Certified Health Education Specialist. And from there, I found out that I had a real passion for wellness and wellness programming and how that was developed.

Then also had the opportunity to work one-on-one with patients as a Certified Health and Wellness Coach. And so that's been interesting and fun to help people reach their goals in a more individualized setting. And so part of that was finding out about the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. Some of the things that they're doing, that, that kind of fit in with that passion of wellness. Because they were talking not just about physical activity which you're very familiar with as an exercise scientist, but also there's so many other components, us having purpose, us having a sense of connection to a community, how we take care of ourselves, not just with physical activity, but with nutrition and sleep.

Decrease smoking or not smoking at all, how the impact that has on our bodies. Alcohol consumption and reasonable consumption of alcohol, those kinds of things, all play into that. How we can take care of ourselves. And that wellness component was so fascinating that I did take the Board Certification for Lifestyle Medicine to be a Certified Lifestyle Medicine Nurse, because of my passions and my interest in helping people understand how to take care of themselves.

And it kind of went right along with my Certified Health and Wellness Coach and we offer that even with our staff here at Memorial Hospital as part of our employee wellness program, that they have access to health coaching. And so, even employers are getting behind this concept that we have to take care of ourselves so that we can take care of other people. That's when we're at our best game. And so that's kind of the how I, how I got to that point.

Host: But that's great. See, you just proved your own point about this evolution and about the healthcare field. And there are so many ways that you can go with it. And so many ways that you can take your passion, now as a lifestyle nurse, I'd like you to speak just a little bit for the listeners about what makes nursing, in particular, such a satisfying career. And how has it been during COVID for healthcare professionals across the board? What have you seen as far as grit and ingenuity and innovation and creativity and taking what's been given to them and saving lives and making people really realize the value of our healthcare professionals. I mean, it chokes me up when I even think about it.

Mary Jane: Well, we definitely figured out during COVID that we have to have talented, creative, innovative thinking at all levels of healthcare. We have to have team members who are not, things, are not beneath them when they're taking care of people. We had people jumping in and doing things that weren't in their scope of practice, not necessarily in a bad way. They were jumping in and being a team member. We all had to work together. I had the opportunity to be a float nurse and work on the floor again in inpatient and how satisfying to help take care of people. That's usually why we get into this profession is to help take care of people.

Our doctors, our nurses, our housekeeping staff, you know, just everybody working together, getting cross trained. Learning something new. And I think we saw that hugely, especially in our area, that people were just jumping in and doing what needed to be done. They were being creative and innovative, and we were dealing with change on a moment by moment basis.

And I think they all stepped up to the game. It was so gratifying. I was so proud of all of them, for what they did and were able to accomplish and how they took care of people. And I mean, just amazing.

Host: I agree with you. Really just amazing as we've seen the way that things like Telehealth. And even in rural areas, how Telehealth and things along those lines have made it so that people could, you know, have outreach and meet with their clinicians without having to drive during COVID.

Mary Jane: And it forced us as a nation to move forward with some of those things where there were barriers before that we were forced into doing stuff maybe. And then there was some additional funding that was available to do some of those things, which I think was helpful to transition in those respects too where maybe rural didn't have the capacity to do some of those things that was recognized during COVID.

And I think there were concessions made for that. And I think the other thing is, is that connectivity, in rural is still lagging. And so, we also found that out with Telehealth that people, don't have the connectivity. So, it's important for us in healthcare to be working with our workforce development. And some of those that are working in other areas outside of our facilities so that we are making sure we have the connectivity at all locations so that they can participate in Telehealth.

Host: So interesting the way that this has evolved during COVID and before we wrap up, and this is kind of an unusual question, Mary Jane, but as people in the past, thought about careers in the healthcare field and men thought about going into orthopedics or being a doctor, or, now our vision of the gender roles in the healthcare industry have changed, I think. So, have you seen that? Are more men becoming nurses and are more women looking to careers in orthopedics and in careers where typically women are really in the pediatric field and are just absolutely, getting into this field with a passion, but what have you seen and what would you like to tell everybody about not classifying those kinds of careers by gender?

Mary Jane: I think more than ever, we have seen a shift. In today's society, you can be what you want to be. I think some of our rural communities and underserved areas are disadvantaged with not having all the programming available to them. But we're even seeing some great programming that does take that into consideration.

We have the Rural Medical Education Program through the University of Illinois at Rockford. And some of our other counterparts in other areas are putting in rural programming. And so, some of those look at kids from rural areas because they're more likely to go back to a rural area. And so that's more the case than pidgeon holing somebody into a gender role or what have you, if you have a passion and an interest in doing something don't let somebody tell you you can't do it, or prove them wrong that you can. Look for opportunities out there that will help you move in the direction that you want to go in.

And I think that's critical for people. There are fantastic nurses who are men. There are fantastic orthopods that are women. And so I think more than ever in our society, there's been a transition to that. You can do what you are passionate about no matter what the gender roles maybe have been in the past.

We have phenomenal teachers who are men, where that was a traditionally female role in the past. And so we've seen a shift in that I think over the last 15, 20 years. And so that's fantastic. You can really explore all different areas.

Host: All different areas. And as we wrap up Mary Jane, what an informative show this was and upbeat and encouraging because we really want to encourage people to get into the healthcare field. As you say, there is such a big spectrum of job availabilities. And certainly it's so important for overall health in the rural communities and the underserved communities to keep people there and to get them to come back and work in their own communities.

So, wrap it up for us with your best information about AHEC and what you would like people to know about healthcare industry careers.

Mary Jane: Don't think that you have to go away to a big area to find job satisfaction. There is job satisfaction right in your back door if you look for it. We are a more mobile society. There's lots that Tele-health and technology has allowed us to do from even remote locations. But don't discredit the great jobs that are available in healthcare, whether your passion is IT, business, the sciences. Let us help you figure out what that path is. And if there are ways that we can help as an AHEC center in this region, we are happy to help students and help them figure out what they want to do, as well as what they maybe don't want to do.

Host: Great information. Thank you so much, Mary Jane, for sharing your expertise on the show with us today. And that wraps up this episode of Say Yes to Good Health with Memorial Hospital. To learn more about all about west central Illinois AHEC and for more health tips, you can always visit our website at mhtlc.org. to get connected with one of our providers. We'd like to thank our audience and invite you to download, subscribe, rate, and review on Apple podcasts, Spotify and Google podcast, so you can listen to them anytime. You can share them on your social channels, you can play them for friends and family.

So thank you so much. I'm Melanie Cole. Thanks for listening.