 Need
for Allied Health Professionals is Growing
As America faces a shortage of health
care professionals, Dr. Shelley Mishoe faces the interesting problem of
classrooms and programs at full capacity.
“Enrollment in our allied health
programs has increased 25 percent [in three years],” said Dr. Mishoe,
dean of the School of Allied Health Sciences. “The medical technology
program alone has quadrupled its enrollment over the past three years.”
MCG’s allied health science
programs—biomedical and radiological technology, dental hygiene, health
informatics, medical illustration, occupational therapy, physical
therapy, physician assistant and respiratory therapy—are at maximum
enrollment. The school, in cooperation with Gwinnett Health Systems,
also operates a satellite program at Georgia Gwinnett College to allow
more students into the nuclear medical technology and medical technology
programs.
“Graduates from entry-level programs are
the ones who will have the biggest impact and increase the workforce,”
said Dr. Mishoe. “We also provide programs for advanced-level training,
which is another important need and part of our mission.”
Allied health professionals comprise
about 60 percent, or 5 million to 6 million, of today’s health care
professionals, according to some estimates. Fifteen of the 30
fastest-growing jobs in the United States are allied health professions.
Attracting students to allied health
programs isn’t the challenge – the cost of educating them is, according
to Dr. Mishoe.
“Our graduates leave with skills that
they’ve learned in clinical and lab experiences – experiences that can’t
be duplicated,” she said. “Having to do things hands-on makes the
programs expensive. A lot of the professions are also
technology-based. We have to offer students the latest technology to
train on, and that’s also expensive.”
But there are ways, Dr. Mishoe said, to
increase program size and efficiency. Finding extramural funding sources
for faculty positions like endowed chairs, collaborating with other MCG
schools and conducting pipeline activities to interest young people in
the disciplines will help decrease costs and attract students who are
more likely to stay in the programs, she said.
“Our faculty, paid and volunteer, work
very hard with our students to minimize attrition,” Dr. Mishoe said.
“Every slot is important for preparing the next health professional.”
Increasing public knowledge about what
allied health professionals are and do will also help encourage people
to join the field, Dr. Mishoe said.
“There is a real lack of public
knowledge about allied health professionals” she said. “We are involved
in a lot of acute care when patients are unconscious and so much of what
we do is often behind the scenes that people don’t often realize just
how big our role is in maintaining and restoring good health.”
To learn more about career opportunities
in allied health, see the school’s video at
www.mcg.edu/sah/sahs-vid.html.
--Jennifer Hilliard
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Simulator Puts
Stroke Patients Back in the Drivers Seat
A high-fidelity simulator that allows
people to practice driving on a computer-generated course can help
stroke patients learn to drive again, researchers have found.
 Patients
who received simulator training were also almost twice as likely as
stroke patients without the training to pass an official driving test at
the end of a five-week training period, according to Dr. Abiodun
Akinwuntan, a Medical College of Georgia physical therapy instructor and
the lead researcher on the study published in the Sept. 27 issue of
Neurology.
“Traditionally, to help patients learn
to drive again, therapists have relied on conventional methods like
paper-and-pencil-based training and sometimes an on-road training
method," Dr. Akinwuntan said. “I have never been a proponent of the
on-road method because it can be unsafe. Healthy drivers find the roads
dangerous enough.”
In 2003, Dr. Akinwuntan and his
colleagues at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium, the
Belgian Road Safety Institute in Brussels and University Hospital in
Pellenberg, Belgium studied 83 stroke patients in the hospital’s
rehabilitation unit. Using a 20-mile computer-simulated course that Dr.
Akinwuntan developed, patients practiced driving in a variety of traffic
situations. Virtual rural and open roads, urban settings and highways
each tested a different skill level.
“Rural, small roads have less traffic
and test basic skills,” he said. “The urban setting has more traffic and
can test how well patients perform when their attention is divided among
many distractions, and the highway setting gives an idea whether they
understand what it means to overtake another car and effectively react
to other drivers and their maneuvers.”
For training, patients drive in a
specially equipped car on a course projected on a large screen. Mistakes
are monitored both by computer and an observing evaluator. Patients
using simulator training were more likely both to pass the driver’s test
and to retain the skill level achieved in training.
The possibilities to apply simulator
training to other areas are endless, Dr. Akinwuntan said. For example,
the simulator could help determine the types of driving skills affected
at different stages of Parkinson’s disease and how interventions like
deep-brain stimulation help people overcome some of the problems.
Dr. Akinwuntan also plans to help
develop a unit at MCG that would use simulators and virtual reality
systems to help doctors and therapists determine the challenges patients
face after leaving the hospital.
“Such information could be used to
modify interventions or influence the rehabilitation programs of
patients,” Dr. Akinwuntan said.
Dr. Akinwuntan, a native of Nigeria,
earned a physical therapy degree from the College of Medicine,
University of Lagos in Nigeria, then worked at the industrial hospital
in Lagos for three years before he longed to supplement his clinical
work with research.
“I was looking for a way to present my
success stories objectively,” Dr. Akinwuntan said. “Of course I can tell
people about my successes, but there will always be questions. Was the
success pure chance? Is there a standard way to teach this to other
people? Could it be applied to other patients? Research was the only
answer.”
He searched worldwide for a research
program and found one at the Katholieke Universiteit. He didn’t know
then what he’d gotten himself into.
“The program director said he’d let me
in the program if I conducted specific research,” he said. “We knew that
a stroke affected driving, but there wasn’t any research saying whether
those who had a stroke could be rehabilitated to drive again and how.”
Dr. Akinwuntan began a study and found
that high-fidelity simulator training could prepare stroke patients to
drive again. The finding yielded several national and international
awards, including the Outstanding Student Paper Award from the
International Symposium on Human Factors in Driver Assessment in Aspen,
Colo., in 2001.
Dr. Akinwuntan received his master’s
degree in physiotherapy in 2000 and his Ph.D. in 2004, both from the
Katholieke Universiteit. He also worked as a senior lecturer and earned
a postgraduate certificate in teaching and learning in higher education
at the University of East London, where he worked from 2004-05.
He joined the MCG faculty in April,
eager to apply his simulator training to other areas. “I’m ready to face
the challenges of finding funding to continue the research,” he said. “I
just want to be able to make a difference.”
--Jennifer Hilliard
[Top]
 MCG
Upgrades Physician Assistant Program to
Master's Level
The School of Allied Health Sciences will upgrade the physician
assistant program to a master’s program in May, deactivating its
bachelor’s degree by fall 2007 when current students are scheduled to
graduate.
MCG is acting on the recommendation of the Association of Physician
Assistant Programs and the American Academy of Physician Assistants to
transition all physician assistant educational programs to a master’s
degree by 2008.
“Our faculty will be working hard to preserve the strengths of our
baccalaureate program and to build a unique graduate curriculum that
will develop excellent clinicians, educators and leaders of the future,”
said Dr. Bonnie Dadig, chair of the Physician Assistant Department.
Physician assistants treat patients under the supervision and
responsibility of a physician. They conduct physical exams, diagnose and
treat medical problems, order and interpret tests, counsel patients,
assist in surgery, and in nearly all states, including Georgia, can
write prescriptions.
Physician assistants are educated in the medical model. Like medical
students, their training includes a combination of classroom studies and
clinical experience.
Applications submitted to MCG’s program are being evaluated based on
the new M.P.A criteria.
According to Judith Stallings, director of admissions, applicants
needn’t have a bachelor’s degree to qualify for the new program.
“Students must have a minimum of 90 credit hours in order to enter the
program, which does not necessarily mean they’ve earned a bachelor’s
degree,” she said.
The M.P.A. program is offered over seven semesters, one semester
longer than the bachelor’s-level program, and requires several new
mandatory prerequisites, including biochemistry, statistics and
introduction to computers.
MCG physician assistant graduates consistently earn a nearly 100
percent satisfaction rating from employers and exceed national averages
of certification tests, Dr. Dadig said.
For more information about the program, including admission
requirements, call 706-721-2725, visit
www.mcg.edu/sah/PhyAsst/
or arrange a Closer Look tour by calling 706-721-2725 or 800-519-3388.
--Kim Miller
[Top]
Program Will Link
Consumers to Health Care Providers
The Medical College of Georgia has
joined a nationwide initiative to link consumers to health care
providers through the World Wide Web.
GoLocal, funded through the National
Library of Medicine, will enable a patient or consumer anywhere in
Georgia to visit the MedLine Plus Web site for health information, then
be directed to providers in their area. MedLine Plus is the National
Library of Medicine’s consumer health information Web site.
MCG is collaborating with Mercer
University, Morehouse College and Emory University to compile a
statewide database of providers, support groups, clinics and other
services.
“The basic idea is that without having
to do a lot of searching, consumers can find high-quality health
information and health service providers,” said Dr. Kent Guion,
associate dean of academic affairs in the School of Allied Health
Sciences.
Dr. Guion, who is working with staff in
MCG’s Greenblatt Library on the project, was selected because of his
experience with GRID – the School of Allied Health Sciences’ rural
online health directory. Like GoLocal, GRID allows rural Georgians to
search out health services by city, county, service or organization.
That Web site averages more than 100 hits per week and lists more than
1,600 resources in its database.
GoLocal’s main challenge will be
increasing the general public’s awareness of MedlinePlus, Dr. Guion
said.
“The ideal is that a person would start
with MedLine Plus when looking for health-related information and then
be led to GoLocal to find providers in their area,” he said. “So many
people don’t know where to look for information. A lot of it is word of
mouth now, and people have to be really careful with a lot of what they
find on the Internet.”
The project will be implemented in
phases, first incorporating existing databases, services and resources
like GRID and Georgia 2-1-1, an information and referral service
operated by the United Way. Once a base has been established, project
coordinators will add resources county by county across the state. The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is coordinating the project.
When the system is fully implemented, Georgia will be one of 20 states
in the country offering the service.
For more information about the GoLocal
initiative, visit
www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/golocal.html.
[Top]
Several School of Allied Health Sciences
students have been honored recently, including:
-
Respiratory therapy student
Leslie Gordon, who received the 2005 Morton B. Duggan, Jr.
Memorial Education Recognition Award from the American Respiratory
Care Foundation. This is the seventh year in a row that MCG
respiratory therapy students have received at least one national
award from the foundation, according to Dr. Randy Baker, chair of
the department.
-
Dental hygiene students Jennifer
Mestres, Shawn Neal and Dani Van Deven, who
received scholarships from the American Dental Hygienists’
Association Institute for Oral Health. The scholarship fund,
established in 1962, provides financial support to dental hygiene
students and dental hygienists who demonstrate academic and
professional excellence.
-
Physician assistant students
Jason Rodwell and Wendy Royal, who represented MCG’s
winning team at the Georgia Association of Physician Assistants’
2005 Student Medical Challenge Bowl. The competition tests the
medical knowledge of physician assistant students in Georgia. MCG
has won the tournament each of its two years of participation,
beginning last year.
[Top]
Dr. Dadig’s Artwork
Featured in Magazine
On a recent business trip, Dr. Bonnie
Dadig found an odd source of inspiration for her painting hobby: the
back of a plane seat.
Dr. Dadig, chair and program director of
the Department of Physician Assistant, found an issue of Skywest
Magazine that featured an article filled with photos of picturesque Utah
sites by award-winning photographer Frank Jensen. Using the small travel
palate and watercolor pencils she frequently takes on plane trips, she
started recreating the images on canvas, intending to use the artwork
for birthday gifts.
But the gesture came full circle when
she submitted her artwork to the very magazine that inspired her:
Skywest Magazine. The magazine published her artwork in its September
2005 edition.
Dr. Dadig has enjoyed the recognition
but keeps her hobby firmly in perspective. “It’s something I usually
just do to pass the time,” she said with a laugh.
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