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 Health & Beauty | January 2007 
Doctor Shortage: Help Sought South of Border
 Lawrence Mower - Las Vegas Review-Journal
| | Officials look to cultivate relationship with Mexican university. |
As Southern Nevada grapples with a shortage of doctors, higher education officials are looking at creating an exclusive relationship with a Mexican university to bring more Spanish-speaking doctors to the valley.
The deal with Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara and four Nevada institutions could see bilingual graduates practicing in Nevada in seven years.
"You can imagine the excitement this is stirring up in the Spanish-speaking community," Community College of Southern Nevada President Richard Carpenter said.
Nevada would join New York as the only states to offer what is known as a "Fifth Pathway" program, which allows students to pursue their medical degree in a different country and perform their residencies in the United States.
"Nevada will definitely be making history," said Maggie Patrel, chief executive officer of Global Professional Medical Consulting, who brokered the deal between the institutions.
Nevada's four major colleges could enter into an agreement next month with the medical school at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara in Guadalajara, Mexico, to train American medical students.
Under the deal, students in Nevada and the United States would be able to attend colleges in Southern Nevada before pursuing their medical degree at UAG.
They would return for residency in Southern Nevada, and officials hope they would stay in the region permanently.
Patrel said the proposed partnership would require students, in chronological order, to take the following:
• Two years of classes at CCSN.
• One year of classes at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas or Nevada State College.
• 3 1/2 years at the medical school at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara.
• One year of electives at the University of Nevada School of Medicine.
• A year of residency in Southern Nevada.
Students would receive an associate's degree from CCSN, a bachelor's degree from UNLV or NSC and a medical degree from the University of Guadalajara.
"The idea is that they (students) would go down there, finish (their degree), and come back to their own state to practice," Carpenter said.
In a state that is desperately short of doctors, ethnic and bilingual doctors are even more rare, a trend reflected in the state's only public medical school.
Since 2002, the University of Nevada School of Medicine has seen about 1,000 applications from students, and 31 of those were from Hispanic students, the school's recruitment director, Ann Diggins, said.
Hispanics made up 23.5 percent of the population in Nevada in 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, but have made up only 3.6 percent of applicants for the school of medicine since 2002. And the local Hispanic population is only expected to increase in size.
"It is shockingly low," Diggins said. "That's the number we're trying to improve."
Of the 31 Hispanic students, 12 were accepted and 10 entered into the program.
Despite recruitment efforts, Diggins said it remains difficult to attract minorities.
"We can't take them if they're not applying," she said.
University of Nevada School of Medicine Vice Dean Dr. James Lenhart said there are often significant cultural and language obstacles for first-generation students in a medical program he admitted is dominated by whites.
First-generation students often don't have parents who also attended college or a university and thus don't have the same financial support, Carpenter said.
A shortage of bilingual doctors has a dramatic effect on the health of the local population, Lenhart said.
"It's very important to understand that good health care is all about the ability to process the language and understand the cultural differences," Lenhart said.
He said that when a patient comes to see a doctor about an illness, 90 percent of the time a doctor can make a correct diagnosis through conversing with the patient. Lab tests later confirm that diagnosis, he said.
But when a doctor doesn't understand the language or culture of the patient, the doctor often has to resort to performing expensive lab tests to come up with a diagnosis.
There is some debate over the makeup of the students who would participate in the program, however.
"It's very important to understand that this is very, very initial," Lenhart said.
Although some officials believe the program should incorporate students of all ethnicities, Lenhart said he would support the program only if the students were Hispanic.
The school of medicine graduated 52 students last year, and it plans on expanding to 96 graduates per year by 2012. Lenhart said the students attending UAG would be a part of those 96 graduates.
First-generation Hispanic students with significant academic successes would be targeted for the program as early as in high school, he said.
"This is about developing a bicultural, bilingual Hispanic health care work force," Lenhart said.
Carpenter, however, said the program could be started as early as CCSN's fall semester of this year. CCSN won't have to develop any new curriculum to accommodate the program, he said.
Lenhart said nothing formal has been agreed upon between the school of medicine and UAG.
"One of our next steps needs to be to identify the right university, and (Universidad Autónoma de) Guadalajara has an extraordinary history in this," Lenhart said.
UAG, which is accredited by the World Health Organization, graduates 2,000 medical students per year, and many of them practice in the United States. By comparison, the University of Nevada School of Medicine graduates about 50 per year.
Dr. Rafael Juarez, an OB/GYN who has practiced in Southern Nevada for 15 years, went through New York's Fifth Pathway program and studied at UAG.
Juarez, who said about one-third of his patients speak Spanish only, said the university has maintained high educational standards equivalent to medical schools in the United States.
University systems in other states have been interested in pursuing a similar type of program, Patrel said, but politics and rivalries have prevented such partnerships from taking place.
"The (cooperative) landscape that we have in Nevada ... has allowed us to promote this kind of program," Patrel said.
But that doesn't mean the economic landscape has been easy for doctors.
Larry Gamell, program manager for the Nevada State Health Division's Office of Minority Health, said there is "a shortage of doctors, period," which he attributes that to a health care field overwhelmed by a shortage of nurses and high insurance costs.
"Nationally there's a lack of interest in entering or becoming doctors these days," Gamell said. "I know physicians who say they would not encourage their children to become doctors because it's so difficult now to make a living as a physician."
For Lenhart, the partnership with UAG could help the school adapt to the region's rapid ethnic and cultural growth.
"We're always behind, but maybe there's a way to get ahead of this or at least catch up to it," Lenhart said. |
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