(Bozeman) – Montana State Nursing College received $2.6 million dollars On August 7h to fight the lack of heath care providers in rural communities in the state. Stacey Stellflug the associate professor on nursing at Montana State University in the Mark and Robins Nursing college talks about the grant.
“We’re very excited we actually had received this grant 4 years ago and then we were chosen to continue with the grant, and it’s called the ANEW grant and this particular grant is incredible for our state because the focus is preparing nurse practitioners. And we have both psych-mental health nurse practitioners and family practice nurse practitioners preparing them to practice in rural settings with a focus on helping them gain the skills that they need. So, that is a very special grant in that way the other piece that were looking forward to and anticipating is that at Montana State we’ll be implementing a certified nurse midwife program. So, obviously meeting some very huge needs in our state as far as lack of access to primary care, mental health care, and to maternal childcare.
She continues by talking about the status of health care in Montana.
“Out of all the states counties, expect for one or two in the state of Montana, are designated as health care provider shortage areas. We have huge needs within our state and basically the whole entire area of eastern Montana is void of mental healthcare providers and there is just not enough mental healthcare in our state to go around which really is a struggle cause we as a state have ranked in the top five for rates of suicide for a long time. It really is a pretty significant need in our state. and then as far as primary care goes the number of primary care providers is quickly dwindling. many of them are reaching retirement age there are not new primary care providers to fill those spots its expensive to get their education and the same is true with maternal care too. That really has been a struggle within our state.”
She also talks about what the money will be used for.
“This grant is very specific in that it is to be applied directly to the students what we do is we have the ANEW rural ready nurse practitioner program, and it is an application process for any of our nurse practitioner students. Once their selected to be a part of ANEW they have to agree to some additional training with a focus on being a rural health care provider and being a solo practitioner in a large geographic area. In turn we provide full tuition, they get a thousand-dollar stipend at the beginning of each year to use towards books they also get they also get a travel stipend and one of their requirements is that they do their clinical rotations in rural settings with a rural healthcare provider.”
She goes into some of the additional training that will be available to students.
“They also get a $2000 a year subsistence that’s just for being in the program and then we pay for additional education opportunities. Our nurse psych and mental health practitioner students also get additional training in therapy modality as well as additional train in learning about all the different medications for mental health. And then as we bring on our certified nurse midwives, they’ll have additional training in area as well like how to do specialized procedures if a baby’s breached and when and how to use an ultrasound. All those kinds of things you probably wouldn’t think about but yet at the same time would be really important especially if they’re in a rural area.”
