Minot Daily News SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 2020
Health Care
MinotDailyNews.com • Facebook • Twitter
Home-grown nurses Rural hospitals play role in filling nursing shortage By JILL SCHRAMM
Senior Staff Writer jschramm@minotdailynews.com Sarah Gregg is a homegrown nurse who now helps train others to become nurses in her home community of Harvey. Nurses like Gregg are part of the success story of the Dakota Nursing Program, which brings together college nursing programs and rural hospitals to address the state’s nursing shortage. Gregg said she had just moved to Harvey in 2011 when she heard about the program. She already held a bachelor’s degree in biology and was an Emergency Medical Technician, which easily fulfilled the prerequisites to secure a spot in St. Aloisius Medical Center’s first nursing class. “I think it would actually have been impossible for me to pursue nursing at that point in my life had I not had the program in Harvey. We are at least an hour or two hours away from Bismarck or Minot,” Gregg said. Gregg, who became the nurse educator at St. Aloisius last August, is a registered nurse working toward her master’s degree. Of the 19 graduates since the program’s start in Harvey in 2011, seven are employed at the local nursing home and Gregg works at the hospital. Gregg said the accelerated course is intensive for students during the 11 months of practical nurse training and additional nine months for registered nursing training. The result is a high quality education, though, she said. “We put out very good nurses, very competent nurses,” she said. Three students currently are
Submitted photos
ABOVE: Bismarck State College nursing instructor Sarah Gregg, RN, left, stands with her students in a licensed practical nursing class at the Harvey site. From left are Michele Frank, Heather Osborn and Jessica Coombs. LEFT: Harvey nursing students Jessica Coombs, left, and Heather Osborn, engage in a pediatric simulation inside Bismarck State College’s new simulation truck.
enrolled in an LPN course in Harvey. Gregg said she hopes to spur increased enrollment because the local medical community still needs more nurses. The hospital has had to rely on traveling staff to meet its needs. Across the state, the Dakota Nursing Program has 195 students enrolled in the LPN training and about 140 in the associate-degree RN training, said Julie Traynor, program director, Devils Lake. The program trains more than 300 practical nurses and associate-degree nurses each year through the four participating colleges. Training is of-
fered in 15 locations across North Dakota through a combination of face-to-face lab and clinical courses and theory courses over Interactive Video Network and online formats. Dakota College at Bottineau offers program sites in Minot, Rugby and Valley City. Williston State College offers the program in Tioga. Bismarck State College works with Ashley, Garrison, Harvey, Hazen and Hettinger, while Lake Region State College has programs in Grand Forks and Mayville. Tioga Medical Center recognized the need to serve as a host facility after a nurse training
program in New Town closed. There were two local instructors in the New Town program who were recruited to teach part-time at the hospital. The medical center now is training a second class of eight future LPNs, having graduated five in its first class. The program was in the process earlier this year of attaining certification to offer an RN program. Once eligible to offer both LPN and RN programs, the intent is to alternate the courses each year, said Ryan Mickelsen, chief operating officer at the hospital and advisory board member for the program.
So far, students have come from outside Tioga’s medical system, but Mickelsen said the hope is to recruit in-house certified nursing assistants to adtheir educations. vance Students have largely been from the local area, though, including Tioga, Ray, Stanley, Crosby and Williston. The program can take up to eight students in a class. “Our hope is to get them in our system, see how we operate and want to come work for us,” Mickelsen said. So far, one LPN has joined the medical center, which has been forced by nursing shortage to look to contract nurses. Remaining LPN graduates have gone on for RN training. CHI-St. Alexius Hospital in Garrison started its LPN program two years ago. The hospital recently was approved by the Board of Nursing to begin an RN program this fall. Tod Graeber, administrator, said the Garrison program can take up to eight students at a time. It had six students who came from Garrison, Turtle Lake and Underwood the first year and currently has three students. So far, all have been going on to the RN program.
Preventing diabetes By JILL SCHRAMM
Submitted Photo
Shelby Stein, community dietitian, with the Fort Berthold Diabetes Program conducts a healthy cooking class in August 2019.
eating out and setting up home and work environments in ways that encourage healthy food choices. Participants get a short cooking demonstration or have a healthy snack prepared for them with a recipe offered. They review local restaurant menus and learn how to make the healthiest selections from those menus. Another major component of the course is physical activity. Partici-
pants are encouraged to engage in at least 150 minutes of activity each week. Stein said those activities can be as simple as taking a walk. “It’s literally anything participants want to do as long as people are moving,” she said. Participants receive information on different exercises and ways to motivate themselves to exercise. “Through the combination of those diet changes and the course on
physical activity, the goal is, hopefully, to promote weight loss,” Stein said. “Research does show if we can lose about 5 to 7 percent of our body weight, if we are overweight to begin with, that can greatly reduce our risk of developing Type II diabetes.” The six-month follow-up after the four months of classes aids in creating accountability so people maintain lifestyle changes. “The goal of those six follow-up
Visit us online at www.MinotDailyNews.com
See NURSES — Page 3
Fort Berthold Diabetes Program helps tribal members avoid disease
Senior Staff Writer jschramm@minotdailynews.com NEW TOWN – One in three American adults has prediabetes, putting them at risk for eventual diabetes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Fort Berthold Diabetes Program looks not only to assist those living with diabetes but also works to help people avoid developing the chronic illness. In recent years, it has offered the National Diabetes Prevention Program to educate people at risk about healthy lifestyles. The most recent offering was in the fall of 2018. A class proposed to start in March was put off due to coronavirus precautions. The goal of the program is to prevent Type II diabetes, said Shelby Stein, registered dietitian with the Fort Berthold Diabetes Program. To participate in the program, a person must have been diagnosed with prediabetes or carry a risk of developing Type II diabetes or have had gestational diabetes. The class draws participants from their late 20s into their 70s. “Being Native American puts people at a higher risk of developing diabetes,” Stein said. “The aim of the program is to teach different lifestyle changes that help reduced the risk of diabetes.” A major focus of the diabetes prevention program is nutrition, and the course goes into detail on how people can eat healthier, Stein said. It teaches how to make healthier choices when
About half have come into the program as certified nursing assistants. Graeber said the initial idea was to recruit CNAs, provide them some financial help or loan repayment as incentives to work at the facility after graduation. Two students finishing their RN training in May have agreed to come back to Garrison, and Graeber said there is a possibility of others doing the same. These are nurses the hospital would not have were it not for the program, he said. The Garrison hospital has recruited international nurses to address its staff shortage, but still has had vacancies. In addition to the in-patient care, the hospital has a 28-bed nursing home. The Benedictine Living Center in Garrison, which has partnered on the nursing training program, has a 50-bed home. Graeber also is administrator for the Turtle Lake hospital. He said it was at a North Dakota Hospital Association conference that staff from both Garrison and Turtle Lake saw what other hospitals were doing with the Dakota Nursing Program
months is to keep people engaged and keep them on track,” Stein said. “Sometimes with lifestyle changes like exercise routines, we kind of fall out of those habits when we don’t have a good group to keep us motivated.” Many people who complete the program report that they are using the tools they learned and maintaining their changes long-term, Stein said. The hope is they will take what they learned into their homes and change family habits that impact the diabetes rate for future generations, she added. “Everything we do here is geared toward a family approach,” Stein said. “This isn’t just something we want you to do but it’s the same nutrition guidelines and activity goals that everyone in the whole family should be doing. There’s nothing extreme or drastic in this program. It’s just focused on healthy lifestyle changes.” In 2019, Elbowoods Memorial Health Center in New Town and its field clinics in Mandaree, Twin Buttes, Parshall and White Shield served 6,790 patients, and 845 of those patients had diagnosed diabetes. The 12.4% is close to the 13% rate for all U.S. adults estimated by the CDC in 2018. Education and services through the Fort Berthold Diabetes Program and the clinic have helped lower the diabetes rate, Stein said. Local availability of the continuous glucose monitoring system, which enables people to monitor blood sugar without drawing blood with a needle prick, also has been made a difference, she said.