Challenge Accepted: USD Stands Ready to Meet Growing Healthcare Workforce Demands

By Alex Strauss

Well before the pandemic triggered a mass exodus of healthcare workers, South Dakota's clinics and hospitals were already suffering from major workforce shortages, especially of nurses. Now, it's worse. 

"We range anywhere from 1200 to 1600 nurses short today to staff our facilities," says Tim Rave, a member of the South Dakota Board of Regents and President & CEO of the South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations. "Workforce shortages are a problem in any profession, but in healthcare, if there is not someone there to take care of you when you are sick or injured, that's a serious problem."

And it is not just nurses. Physicians, physician assistants, physical and occupational therapists, social workers, public health experts, techs of all kinds, and support staff are all in short supply. 

Rave says South Dakota's public universities are working hard to address the problem, as evidenced by new and accelerated nursing programs and facilities on both sides of the state. For its part, the University of South Dakota has recently expanded and transformed spaces for its School of Health Sciences programs in both Vermillion and Sioux Falls. Rave calls the moves "an important and exciting piece of the larger puzzle." 

"Making these kinds of programs accessible to as many students as possible is critical because a large majority of students who graduate from a South Dakota university stay in South Dakota to work," says Rave. 

Even out-of-state students, once they get a taste of South Dakota's high quality of life, often decide to put down roots here. "Once they become an integral part of a smaller community, especially in the healthcare space, many of them stay there their whole lives," says Rave."I think it's always better to have our graduates stay in state."

Team-Based Learning

"We continually look for ways to grow and change as the needs of our citizens change, especially in our rural communities,” says USD President Sheila K. Gestring of the recent expansions.

Gestring says communities - both big and small - are increasingly relying on a collaborative, team-based approach to healthcare that is both highly patient-centered and technology-savvy.  The new buildings and the programs they will house are designed to ensure that USD health sciences graduates can shine in both areas.

"USD replicates modern hospital and clinic environments and teaches an interprofessional delivery of healthcare," says Gestring. "Students in the USD School of Health Sciences and the Sanford School of Medicine learn, study and practice as coordinated teams."

"Team-based teaching and learning are foundational to the way we provide education here," agrees School of Health Sciences Dean Haifa Abou Samra. "The framework we use is that graduates need to have two types of skills. They need tech skills specific to their profession. Nursing needs to have the skills to be a nurse, PT students need to have PT skills, etc.

"But there are also cross-functional skills that all professions need. They are extremely important for the success of the graduate because they are related to patient safety and quality."

Abou Samra points to the fact that 70 percent of medical errors occur because of a breakdown in communication within the medical team. Team-based training, she says, can help prevent that. 

Built for the Future

School of Health Sciences students hone their team-based skills in two primary buildings - the new, dedicated SHS building on the Vermillion campus, and the recently-transformed University of South Dakota-Sioux Falls building (formerly the Community College for Sioux Falls). Both facilities are state-of-the-art and are designed to efficiently facilitate collaborative learning, accommodate larger class sizes, and offer true-to-life-clinical environments. 

The three-story, 45,000 square-foot SHS building in Vermillion is connected to the Andrea E. Lee Memorial Medicine and Science Building. It houses the dental hygiene, nursing, physician assistant, addiction counseling and prevention, and medical laboratory science programs, as well as undergraduate programs in public health, health sciences, and social work. The dental hygiene, PA, and addiction counseling programs are the only ones in the state. 

Among the advantages in this building are high-end microscopes that allow students to download and share images, a new lab for practicing procedures, and clinic-like exam rooms equipped with audiovisual equipment to record interactions between PA students and their "patients".

More Simulation Opportunities

USD's medical simulation centers in Vermillion and Sioux Falls will also see upgrades. The Nursing Center for Simulation and Interprofessional Development, located in the Lee Medical Building, has recently been remodeled and expanded. There are also plans to expand and add a surgical suite and simulated ICU at The Parry Center for Clinical Skills and Simulation on the USD Sanford School of Medicine's Sioux Falls campus, 

Future expansion of the Sioux Falls simulation center is just one of the things USD hopes to  make possible by consolidating the health sciences programs in the new space. 

In addition to the baccalaureate in nursing and the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) in Nurse Anesthesia, the USD-SF building  will house the Master of Public Health, the Master of Social Work, and USD’s new CRNA program, as well as all Sioux Falls-based nursing classes and a nursing skills lab. The Center for the Prevention of Child Maltreatment and the Center for Rural Health Improvement will also share the building.

"These new spaces are transformative in nature," says Abou Samra. "They will not only accommodate more students, but they will transform how we educate, allowing for even more collaboration and even better technology. This is the future of healthcare."

Creating Compassionate Caregivers

As important as it is to produce more healthcare workers for the state of South Dakota, Abou Samra says the School of Health Sciences is equally focused on making sure those workers will also be compassionate caregivers and good citizens. 

"We are constantly trying to find new ways to engage students in the communities so they will stay and practice," she says. "It is not enough just to provide good healthcare and plenty of people to fill the jobs. We also want to make sure that our graduates are also humanistic." 

To that end, USD encourages all students to take part in service projects, such as the free Vermillion Community Clinic, a student-run clinic created this year in collaboration with the Sanford School of Medicine and Sanford Health. 

"We know that health is not only determined by biology, but also by environmental and psychosocial factors and students need to understand all of these when they're working with patients to produce the best outcomes," says Abou Samra.