In rural DeKalb County, Tenn., the need for healthcare is great. The predominantly agricultural area has a population of about 20,000 spread out over 329 square miles of rolling hills and winding rivers, with one ambulance serving the entire area.
DeKalb County has only five doctors, and several are nearing retirement. The local hospital is not allowed to provide live births. For Ashli Chew, these stark disparities only motivated her to pursue a career in rural medicine.
“I feel a calling to work in my hometown,” she said. “I feel like they are my people, so it’s important to me to give back to that area. I’ve seen the significant need and lack of resources.”
A medical student at East Tennessee State University’s Quillen College of Medicine, Chew grew up in rural Tennessee and has always known she wanted to return home to practice. An emergency room rotation at her hometown hospital made the decision even more personal. The understaffed facility contracts with out-of-town physicians to cover emergency room shifts, and one night Chew was paired with a distracted doctor who was dismissive of the three patients who came in. For Chew, however, they weren’t just patients — one was a member of her graduating class, one attended her church, and one was a former student of her grandmother.
“I knew all of them,” she recalled, “but he was very cavalier and flippant with them. One thing he said was, ‘This seems like a big deal to them, but I’ve seen a lot, and they really don’t need to come to the ER for this.’ It was striking to me because I know these people and I love these people, and maybe it’s not an emergency to him, but it is to them. It was really hard for me to take. I decided it isn’t his job to care about these people — it’s mine.”
Reason to care
For Chew and many other rural medical and public health students, finding their “reason to care” was a huge deciding factor in pursuing small-town practice — and they believe rural living has a lot to offer the younger generation. Stakeholders also suggest medical students from various backgrounds need more exposure to rural healthcare. Chew feels many people have misconceptions about rural practice that can be dispelled by firsthand experience and finding reasons to become invested in the community.
The National Rural Health Association (NRHA) is dedicated to building a robust rural health workforce through our Rural Medical Education Group and Conference, which occurs just before the association’s 48th Annual Rural Health Conference, the largest gathering of rural health professionals in the country May 20-23 in Atlanta. In addition to these educational events, NRHA’s rural healthcare workforce advocacy pillar, workforce-related policy position papers, and our rural health career center offer students, educators, job seekers, and employers end-to-end opportunities through NRHA membership and networking opportunities at our events to support rural workforce development now and in the future.
