UNMC uses federal funds for mental health professional shortage

The University of Nebraska Medical Center is working to remedy the state's "overwhelming" shortage of mental health professionals with more than $1 million in federal support.

Using a $1.18 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, UNMC is administering two new postbaccalaureate distance education nursing programs that hope to nearly double the number of psychiatric nurse practitioners in Nebraska within three years, bringing particular relief to the state's underserved rural areas.

Nearly 247,000 Nebraskans require some degree of treatment for a mental illness. Primary care physicians can assist those with mild or moderate conditions, but people with more serious illnesses require acute care and medications administered only by psychiatric specialists, who are in high demand but short supply.

"The situation is dire," said Michael Rice, a professor of psychiatric nursing at UNMC.

According to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, an estimated 40,000 people statewide need psychiatric specialists' services in a given year. However, only 148 psychiatrists, nine physician assistants and 54 nurse practitioners were able to diagnose and treat those patients in 2008.

"The need for more is quite literally overwhelming," especially outside of Omaha and Lincoln, Rice said. "It's not a good situation."

All but five of Nebraska's 93 counties are considered "underserved."

With the help of the federal grant, UNMC is hoping to make the situation less "severe," as Rice labeled it. Eighteen students are on track to have master's degrees as family psychiatric nurse practitioners in four semesters. Fourteen others, all of whom are already advanced practice nurses, are in the two-semester post-master's "sprint track" toward a speciality in mental health.

By 2012, the medical center expects to have added more than 40 psychiatric nurse practitioners to Nebraska's workforce, and it will all have been done through distance education.

The program courses, which started in August, are conducted entirely online via videos, narrated PowerPoint presentations and, as of this January, interactive video conferencing.

Using technology rather than cumbersome – and expensive – travel to bridge the distance between students and professors "increases their access to us and our access to them," Rice said.

Ultimately, training students close to home will decrease patients' travel time, too, said Julia Houfek, an associate professor in UNMC's College of Nursing, because the nurses are likely to practice in the community where they trained.

Rice said UNMC's "emphasis is really on educating people in the rural areas where they live presently."

"If we have to pull a nurse out of a hospital just so they can come to school, that hurts their community, and then it's a long, long hunt to find a replacement for them," he said. "One of the advantages of this grant is that they can stay in their communities, and we work around their lifestyle."

teresalostroh@dailynebraskan.com