University to introduce more health-related academic programs

In an effort to meet regional demand -- and provide local hospitals and medical practices with more of the personnel they need -- Southeast Missouri State University will introduce a variety of new health-related academic programs in spring 2015, once they are approved by the state's Coordinating Board for Higher Education.

Between the hospitals and large physicians' practices, "We're the center hub from Memphis to St. Louis," said Healther McMillan, faculty associate, Office of the Provost.

"One of the things we noticed is that our local hospitals are going to Memphis and St. Louis to hire people. Why? We're graduating great, great students," McMillan said. "Let's get the education that our hospitals need and get our students educated that way so they hire our students."

Additionally, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment in the medical and health services management fields will grow by 23 percent between now and 2022. Many of those opportunities will be in marketing, human resources, finance and administration positions, according to information from the university.

Broadening curricula

Over the past few months, a number of new health-related programs have come through the Southeast Missouri State University Board of Regents for approval. McMillan said the university offers close to 60 different health-care-related degrees and certificates on campus -- in everything from primary care and support, or tertiary services, to management.

"Basically, we are working on the branding of health studies at Southeast as a service. This is the health-care hub of the region, and we want to be known as the health-care education provider of the region," McMillan said.

Part of doing that is getting the word out that Southeast offers programs that can benefit area hospitals and exposing students to the various fields before they graduate, McMillan said, "so they get these experiences and learn that it is more than direct patient care that makes the hospitals run, and there's a place for a lot of different types of individuals."

"Education is beyond what we're doing on the grounds of the university," McMillan added. "It's stepping into workplaces, into organizations, and helping them perform better. They support us; we should support them. ... I really want to see health studies at Southeast reach out to the community. It's not just about educating our students, it's about helping the community help the health-care providers do their jobs better, because they all feed each other."

Locally, there are other health-care education opportunities. McMillan noted that the programs are not designed to replace any existing degrees, but to allow students who want to pursue a different path in health care to do so.

Southeast Health College of Nursing and Health Sciences is a private not-for-profit institution of higher learning that specializes in preparing people for health-care careers such as nursing, surgical and radiologic technology and registered nurse to master of science in nursing.

President Tonya Buttry said the school is owned by SoutheastHEALTH. It reopened in 1990 after operating from 1928 to 1932 as a diploma school of nursing.

McMillan said when there were nursing schools attached to hospitals, nurses did not get an associate degree because they weren't going to a college or community college, hence the term diploma nurse.

SoutheastHEALTH College of Nursing opened with the original hospital, Buttry said in an email. The hospital closed the nursing school in 1932 during the Great Depression.

In 1990, during a nursing shortage, Buttry wrote, the college reopened its nursing program as a licensed practical nurse (LPN) to registered nurse (RN) program. Since then, the college has grown.

"We currently have an associate degree nursing program, associate degree radiography program, and three certificate programs: ... medical laboratory science ... medical laboratory assistant, and ... surgical technology. We have approximately 250 students, with the majority being nursing students," she wrote.

About half of the college's students typically work for SoutheastHEALTH after graduation. The remaining students primarily work at other health-care facilities in the community, she said. Buttry noted the college is intended to help meet the health-care education needs of the community, not just Southeast Hospital.

The Cape Girardeau School District's Career and Technology Center also features training for high school students in various health occupations, which have been quite popular.

"We talked to different constituency groups from St. Louis, from the region, and they told us we're missing people with these types of knowledge; so that's really what drove the building of the programs," McMillan said.

Asked about the potential enrollment for the programs, McMillan said information gathered in 2012 from students who have taken their ACTs has shown 11,500 students in the area interested in health careers.

"So the whole service area that had an interest in health studies of some form or fashion," McMillan said. "They are not all enrolled with us, but that's a huge potential market of graduating seniors from high school and it's all areas -- health administration, facilities management, medical records, public health, nursing."

She said the programs could pull from the Career and Technology Center as well.

"Particularly with the degrees in the College of Business, those are the health-care management degrees, the ones that came through [recently], we designed those to maximize the number of associate degree hours that we could," McMillan said. "I worked with Sandy Hinkle, the registrar, whenever we were putting those degrees together to really maximize those articulation agreements that we already had in place."

Interdisciplinary work

McMillan said the new programs are "very" interdisciplinary, stemming from Southeast's Academic Visionary Committee, aimed at maximizing what the school offers, how it can do that better and things it needs to offer to address student and community needs.

She said Southeast Missouri State president Kenneth Dobbins wanted to "break down the silos" of university departments to ensure the best subject matter experts were used for the courses. Using instructors from across campus also gives students more perspectives, which McMillan said is useful in health care, where people will be taking care of a variety of patients.

Dr. Sarah Holt, medical practice executive for Cape Girardeau Surgical Clinic, teaches health-care budgets and reimbursement and health policy at Southeast for the master's program, and she will be teaching the same for undergraduates, as well. Having earned a doctoral degree herself, Holt said, she believes education is always the way toward advancement.

"This is an area where you have to be a lifelong learner," Holt said. "You cannot get an MBA, get a master's, get in medical practice administration -- any of those things -- and say, 'OK, now I'm done.'"

"There's no question that the coursework will contribute greatly to the education and to the understanding of people in the program because health care is a unique business. Just because you ... run a travel agency successfully doesn't mean you can step in and be successful running a health-care organization," Holt said.

rcampbell@semissourian.com

388-3639

Pertinent address: One University Plaza