UNMC Interim Chancellor H. Dele Davies, MD, traveled to Central Nebraska at the end of February to meet with hospital and health system leaders as UNMC prepares to expand its program offerings in that area of the state.
With ongoing enrollment in the colleges of allied health and nursing, the first cohort of pharmacy students set to begin in the fall 2025 semester and the first cohort of medical students in 2026, Dr. Davies and his team met with leaders of CHI Health St. Francis – Grand Island, Grand Island Regional Medical Center, Mary Lanning Healthcare in Hastings, Great Plains Health in North Platte, and the Kearney Regional Medical Center and CHI Health Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney.
The trip primarily focused on expanding medical preceptorship opportunities in the central and western parts of the state. UNMC currently has between 40 and 50 medicine preceptors in the central and western Nebraska area, and leaders hope to increase that number by as many as 50 more before the UNMC College of Medicine at Kearney welcomes its first class. The team also sought to assess the ability and readiness of each community to provide safe and high-quality housing and transportation for students who rotate there.
“Preceptors are professionals within a community that help train students when they are on clinical rotations within communities throughout Nebraska and beyond,” Dr. Davies said. “UNMC wants to increase the number of health care professionals who serve as preceptors, especially as we begin to offer programs in medicine and pharmacy and expand our other health care profession education programs in Kearney.
“The students who are mentored in every community are most likely to become the future health care providers for those communities. We also wanted to express our commitment to supporting every preceptor we enroll in training our students through our Center for Community-Based Education and Preceptor Excellence.”
Dr. Davies was joined by Kyle Meyer, PhD, interim assistant vice chancellor for health care workforce education and relations and dean of the UNMC College of Allied Health Professions; Rob Messbarger, MD, associate dean for the UNMC College of Medicine’s regional medical school campus; Faye Haggar, EdD, manager, Center for Community-based Education & Preceptor Excellence, and Chandra Are, MBBS, associate dean for graduate medical education, UNMC College of Medicine.
“We have a core group of talented and committed preceptors in central and western Nebraska,” Dr. Messbarger said. “But we want to broaden that group so that our current preceptors have less of a workload as the number of medicine students increase.”
Increased opportunity for medicine preceptorships, Dr. Davies said, also increases the opportunity for interprofessional experience among UNMC health care students in central and western Nebraska.
“We have about 350 students at Kearney currently, and that number will approximately double after full implementation of the expansion initiative,” Dr. Davies said. “We want each student’s clinical experiences in rural Nebraska communities, to be rewarding and lead to a desire for some to want to return to practice in these communities.
“Part of the goal of UNMC’s Kearney expansion is to increase interprofessional education. As we work to keep students in or near their home communities, we want to work with our preceptors on how to precept interprofessional teams of students to work in rural areas, to better realize these improved outcomes.”
The meetings also discussed expanding existing and potentially adding new rural rotations for medicine residents in central and western Nebraska.
“We learned more about the hospital systems’ and regions’ interest and needs for residents to rotate in rural Nebraska and provide care within their organizations and communities,” Dr. Are said. “It is well known that there is a severe shortage of physicians across rural Nebraska and America. Exposing residents to rural rotations during their training will likely increase the chances for them to locate their practice in those settings and help to alleviate the physician workforce shortage. As a state institution, addressing physician workforce shortages is one of our key responsibilities.”
Dr. Davies said he was pleased with the meetings, and every health system visited expressed strong interest in both providing preceptors and welcoming more students and residents to rotate at their institution.
“This work is ongoing,” he said. “I look forward to continuing to strengthen partnerships with UNMC’s clinical partners across Nebraska.”