Montana’s 1.1 million people sometimes drive an hour or two to get medical care. The cities have hospitals, but 46 of the 56 counties are designated as “frontier.” A nurse practitioner is often the only health care provider in those sparsely populated areas.
Montana State University graduates about 300 registered nurses, 15 to 20 family nurse practitioners and 10 to 12 psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners annually. But it’s not enough.
That is about to change.
A Texas couple, Mark and Robyn Jones, gave the university $101 million to construct new buildings for the nursing program and establish a nurse-midwife program.
5 campuses; 1 purpose
Montana State’s College of Nursing, opened in 1937, is unusual because it is not located on one campus but distributed across five cities: Bozeman, Billings, Great Falls, Kalispell and Missoula.
It offers a Bachelor of Science in Nursing at all its campuses and uses distance learning for its master’s, Doctor of Nursing Practice and post-master’s certificates. The doctor of nursing practice graduates can serve as family nurse practitioners, psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners and nurse-midwives.
“If we had limited our students to Bozeman, we wouldn’t have been able to produce nurses the state needs,” said Sarah Shannon, dean of the Mark and Robyn Jones College of Nursing.
“If you take a young person in rural areas and ask them to move to a bigger city for nursing school, they often have to move with their spouse and kids. And when they graduate, they don’t return to their small communities. We deliver the education to them as much as possible. We have been very successful. Seventy-five percent of our graduates stay in state.”
Physicians are trained at WWAMI Regional Medical Education Program, a partnership among the state of Washington, the University of Washington and the states of Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho.
The Joneses, owners of Goosehead Insurance in Fort Worth, learned about the disparities in Montana’s health care when they established a $1 million scholarship for WWAMI students in memory of a friend who died of cancer in Montana.
“Mark and Robyn saw how challenging it is to get health care in Montana,” Shannon said. “They asked how they could help to improve the well-being of all Montanans.”
Shannon told them about the vital role nurses play in the state. The Joneses responded in 2021 with what was then the largest donation to a nursing school in the US.
“If we had limited our students to Bozeman, we wouldn’t have been able to produce nurses the state needs.” — Sarah Shannon, dean, Montana State University’s Mark and Robyn Jones College of Nursing
The nursing programs have leased space wherever they can, including medical offices and retrofitted dorms, but they have outgrown the space.
Construction is underway on the new buildings, and by the end of next year, the nursing programs will operate in state-of-the-art buildings designed for nursing education. These buildings will have enough space for the college to graduate an additional 100 nurses by 2030.
Health care partners donated land for the buildings: Billings Clinic and Intermountain Health St. Vincent Regional Hospital in Billings, Benefis Health System in Great Falls, Community Medical Center in Missoula and Logan Health in Kalispell.
Simulations help solve for shortage in hands-on training
The buildings will be equipped with three high-fidelity simulation rooms that can provide 28 simulations, giving students hands-on experience and practical skills using high-tech patient manikins that can be programmed to simulate various health situations.
One critical need in the state is nurse midwives, and the Jones’ donation will also be used to start a certified nurse midwifery program, which will prepare doctoral-level nurses capable of providing prenatal and obstetric services.
“Montana is sixth from the bottom for maternal outcomes. Women have to drive as much as 3.5 hours for prenatal care,” Shannon said.
Shannon said that because the hospitals are small, students might spend 60 hours in a hospital rotation and never see a birth. The simulations will include three delivery scenarios: normal vaginal delivery, postpartum hemorrhage and preeclampsia management.
“It isn’t our goal to produce a labor-and-delivery specialist,” Shannon said. “We will train them to provide prenatal and postnatal care. They will see parking lot deliveries and women who are in active labor. We want to produce someone who can handle the first hour. Someone who can make the right decisions to improve mother and infant outcomes.”
The nursing students are also trained to handle pediatric emergencies, such as car or farm accidents or children in respiratory distress. Pediatric emergencies often are sent to Seattle, Denver or Salt Lake.
“We want to make sure our graduates know what to do in the ‘golden hour,’ that first hour when, if you do things right, you increase survival rates,” Shannon said.
Nursing students also learn how to provide palliative care.
“Montana is the grayest state in the West. We’re in the top five nationally for the percentage of the population over 65,” Shannon said. “We want to help them age in place and not have to transfer to another community for end-of-life care.”
Shannon said the Jones’ gift will help address the disparity between urban and rural outcomes.
“Montana is a great place to raise a family,” Shannon said. “People don’t want to move to a community without health care.”
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
Subscribe to SmartBrief’s FREE email newsletter to see the latest hot topics on higher education. It’s among SmartBrief’s more than 250 industry-focused newsletters.