At 16-years-old, a bad car accident changed my life dramatically. I was rushed to the critical access hospital in my hometown of Glasgow — a town in Valley County with a population just shy of 5,000 residents. It was quickly evident that they did not have the services to take care of my injuries.
I was lucky that Dr. Kevin Ross was my provider in the emergency room that day. He stabilized my injuries and made the decision to life-flight me to Billings Clinic. Dr. Ross is one of the main reasons I survived the accident.
Prior to my accident, I was a Certified Nursing Assistant working at Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital (FMDH). I had been interested in medicine since I was young, tracing bones and muscles out of my mom’s anatomy books at my sister’s baseball games. Mom was an ER nurse and I was fascinated by the idea of being able to give back to my community and help make one of the worst days in someone’s life a little better. At FMDH Montana WWAMI medical students were frequently rotating through the clinic on their Targeted Rural Underserved Track (TRUST) experience.
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WWAMI is a regional medical school partnership between top-ranked University of Washington School of Medicine (UWSOM) and five western states: Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho (WWAMI). Montana WWAMI students — all of whom are Montana residents — start learning medicine at Montana State University and gain firsthand clinical experience alongside physician preceptors across the Treasure State. The more I learned about WWAMI Medical Education, the more determined I was to one day be a Montana WWAMI student myself.
While I’m incredibly grateful for the care I received in Billings, data shows that improved availability to health care in small towns like Glasgow could help improve mortality rates; in 2020, U.S. age-adjusted rural mortality rates measured 960 people per 100,000 residents, while urban mortality rates were lower, at 800 people per 100,000 residents.
The gap in higher rural mortality rates can be explained by factors such as disparities in socioeconomic conditions and perhaps, more importantly, access to health care in one’s own community. In recent years, we have also seen a rise in hospital staffing shortages, leaving health care workers burnt out. In my case, Dr. Ross and his colleagues stabilized my injuries long enough to make it to Billings. Every case is different, and other patients may not have the same experience.
Most people do not have the chance to thank the physician who saved their life, let alone be mentored by them. Dr. Ross recently started a new position as WWAMI’s Glasgow TRUST site director he and I will meet again (under much better circumstances) this summer as I continue my medical education as a TRUST Scholar in my hometown of Glasgow. In other words, through WWAMI’s rural programming, I will have the opportunity to learn patient care from the very doctor who saved my life.
Montana WWAMI prepares students to become well-rounded physicians who can thrive in rural settings. My graduating high school class was just nine students; attending one of the country’s top-ranked medical schools and training with physicians that are actively caring for Montanans is an opportunity that I am grateful for.
If you are a Montana student like me thinking about medicine, please pursue it. If I was able to do it coming from a tiny high school in northeast Montana, you can too. Montana needs you.