Stan State EduCast

Health Access: Rooted in Care, Rising Together

• Stanislaus State

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California’s Central Valley faces a growing healthcare crisis—from long ER wait times to a severe shortage of nurses and primary care providers. In this episode of the Stan State EduCast, we explore how Stanislaus State is tackling the issue head-on by training local students to become the next generation of healthcare professionals.

Host Frankie Tovar is joined by Dr. Sarah Sweitzer (Dean of the Stockton Campus) and Dr. Wendy Matthew (Associate Professor of Nursing) for an in-depth conversation about nursing shortages, health equity, burnout, and how simulation labs, bachelor’s programs, and community partnerships are reshaping the region’s healthcare future.

Whether you're a student, parent, faculty member, healthcare partner, or community advocate, this episode will show you how Stan State is “growing local, training local, and keeping local” — all while building a healthier, more equitable Central Valley.

Dr. Sarah Sweitzer: https://www.csustan.edu/people/wendy-matthew 
Dr. Wendy Matthew: https://www.csustan.edu/people/dr-sarah-sweitzer 

Stan Magazine Article: https://issuu.com/csustanislaus/docs/stan_magazine_spring_2025/s/84341041 

School of Nursing Website: https://www.csustan.edu/nursing 

HealthForce Partners: https://healthforcepartners.org

Produced by the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing, edited and recorded in the KCSS studios on the campus of Stanislaus State.

Frankie:

Healthcare is a critical issue in the United States for millions of people. Affordability and cost are typical points of focus, but access to care has proven to be just as impactful when it comes to the health of our country. And when you examine these issues through the lens of inequality, be it racial or economic. The situation becomes even more dire. In California, San Joaquin Valley, for example, there are only 47 primary care physicians for every 100,000 residents. Well, below the state average of 60 and the national average of 89. Similar gaps also extend to mental health professionals and registered nurses in the area as well. The California Healthcare Foundation projects that by 2030, the state will need 10,000 more primary care providers and 10,000 more registered nurses to adequately meet the needs of Californians. Like I said, it's a dire situation. So what's being done to address these issues? How can we bridge these access gaps? And who's leading the way? In our medically underserved region. Well, one of the major leaders of this effort is stanis Law State senior writer and content specialist. Donna Birch Trehan recently pinned a wonderful cover story for Stan Magazine that explored the many ways in which the university is tackling these problems head on, and that article. Is the foundation for this episode of the Stan State EdCast. It's a must read if you're interested in these issues, and I highly recommend that you do read it. After listening to this episode, we will of course provide a link to that article in the episode description. There's a lot to cover, so I think we should dive right into the discussion and welcome our guests. Dr. Sarah Schweitzer, Dean of the Stockton Campus, and Dr. Wendy Matthew, registered nurse, certified health simulation educator, associate professor, and future director of the School of Nursing.

Narrator:

You're listening to the Stan State EdCast, produced on the campus of Stanislau State.

Frankie:

All right, Wendy. Sarah, welcome to the Stan EdgeCast. Thanks for joining us.

Sarah:

Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you so much for having us.

Frankie:

I provided some stats about the state of healthcare in the region, but you two have a deeper, more personal connection to this issue. How would you describe what's going on here in the valley throughout California and across the nation? Thanks for asking that. Great question.

Sarah:

What we're experiencing in the San Joaquin Valley, while it is very personal and impactful to all of us here locally. We have to recognize it's not unique. This is a widespread problem. Both rural and urban communities across California and across the nation are experiencing long wait times and decreasing healthcare access. The causes of this are complex. They span everything from a large number of aging baby boomers with complex health needs. To an increasing number of chronic diseases in younger people to deferral of healthcare during COVID to usage of emergency rooms for urgent and not emergency health needs, and a growing healthcare workforce shortage that are all disproportionately affecting rural and under resource. Communities. And as you know, this describes most of our communities in Northern San Joaquin Valley.

Frankie:

And has this been a longstanding issue? Is this a recent issue? Like how long has this been a major impact when it comes to health here in the Central Valley?

Wendy:

I think we've always been underserved. I think it's just becoming a lot more awareness now about it. A lot more. Focus on it. And I think right now we're in like this perfect storm where we're underserved, right? We don't have enough providers for the population that we have, and so we have long wait times. We're not able to get in for items that we need to get seen in for, for healthcare issues. Um, some providers are not accepting new patients. There's just not enough of them, right? So of the few that are working. They're overloaded. They're overwhelmed, right? So for our nurses, we have nurse patient ratios, but then we're going outside of that. So the nurses are getting burnout. They might be leaving the bedside. Now we have less nurses, so the ones that are working are getting burnout and leaving. So how are we going to. Fix this in one swoop. So it's gonna continue to get worse until we do focus on it and we have a clear plan in place.

Sarah:

And I'd just add, for San Joaquin County, this is coupled to a growing population, right? Stockton and San Joaquin County are some of the fastest growing urban communities in California. For instance, Tracy has rapidly grown in its population, and so what were existing health inequities longstanding. Are just getting worse as we grow our population base and we're not growing our number of healthcare providers.

Frankie:

So is that population growth, the reason why now was such a critical moment for healthcare education in the Valley?

Sarah:

So again, it's a complex factor, but really if we look at our northern San Joaquin County is especially Stanis Law in San Joaquin County, we historically have. A low bachelor degree attainment rate, and really that bachelor degree is the entry level for many of our healthcare workforce jobs. And we have a difficult time attracting healthcare professionals to relocate to the valley. So we really need to change our focus to one of grow local, train local, and keep local. Because if we can grow our pipelines from our high schools through our public institutions, this is where we're gonna grow and keep our local workforce right? These are students who are here, they have family connections, they've been here generationally, but they haven't had generational education. And this really is where the work we do at Stan State is critical in the short term and in the long term solution to our healthcare shortage. This is where we are saving lives in our communities by training our local students.

Wendy:

I agree. A lot of our students that come to us from the community are serving the people that are like them, that speak the language as them, that connect with their patients. We try to give advantages to the students that live in our area, like they get extra points if they have a zip code in our local area, the Central Valley. Come summer of August, 2026, we're going to implement 50% of our applicants will be admitted from Stan State specifically, and then the other 50% from outside. Because historically, students that come to our area to get educated that live in another area will come here, get their education, spend one year, one year here. And go back home. Well, that's a lot of money for our local hospitals to train a nurse for a year, for them to go back to where they live. So we're really trying to incentivize the students that live in the Central Valley to come to our programs and to work here, practice here. Be a part of our community, the community that they've grown up in, and they can relate to their patients in that way.

Frankie:

Why do you think retention has been such a, a big obstacle

Wendy:

specifically for nurses? I think a lot are getting burnt out really quick. Like I said, because of the shortage, COVI, you have all of these different things, maybe an idea of what nursing was like and, and it maybe not standing up to that due to the pandemic, uh, going to work, you know, expecting to take care of three patients and ending up with five or six patients, just feeling very overwhelmed. Becoming the, you know, we used to have a lot of support like LVNs, CNAs, and some floors don't have that at all. They, their nurses are now. Complete 100% caring for the patient without additional help. And all of that is just compounding to, to cause burnout is one of the main reasons

Sarah:

I'll add to it at the larger healthcare career ecosphere. So if you're talking about physicians, if you're talking about pharmacists, if you're talking about. Clinical lab specialists who are running the tests in the hospitals. What we have is an aging workforce, and so it is true the baby boomers are retiring. We have a significant portion of nurses that have hit retirement age. Many of them deferred it after we had the great recession because their retirements took a hit. But after COVID, people are taking their retirement. So we have the fall off of the natural attrition of retirement. Coupled with this decreasing workforce coming in coupled with the high burnout rate, especially during COVI and post COVID.

Frankie:

What demographics are most affected by this burnout? By this lack of retention, by this lack of access here in the Central Valley.

Wendy:

I think all patients are impacted by that. I think not having a specialist to go see, like if you have a high-end issue, you need to go to U-C-S-F-A facility outside of our area. Right. Delayed diagnosis. Higher emergency room reliance, right? We're using that as a primary care, so true emergencies aren't getting seen. We're all being

Sarah:

impacted. Whether you have employer provided private health insurance, or you have Medi-Cal, we're all impacted and we're all impacted because it comes down to, as Wendy said. Do you have access to primary care? Do you have timely access to primary care? Do you have timely access to specialty care? And when we don't have that access, we end up using our emergency room as an urgent care facility versus an emergency room. So then when we do go in with an emergency, we're literally sitting for hours waiting to get into the emergency room. So I would say we're all impacted. Buy it. But this disproportionately impacts our low income families, our Medi-Cal families, our uninsured or underinsured families. And this disproportionately, especially up in Stockton and the more urban areas, it disproportionately is impacting our communities of color.

Frankie:

We don't have a crystal ball here. We can look into the future, but if the trend continues the way it's going, what does that future look like for. All of us who live here in the Central Valley. I mean, is it as bleak as my mind is telling me it is, or is there any precedent anywhere else that we could look to and kind of see, okay, if, if things don't take a turn, this could be what we're we're looking at.

Wendy:

I'm on the same page as you. It looks pretty bleak if we don't, if we don't focus and do something about this. But I think we have some great, great ideas in the horizon too, to help with the situation. So I would

Sarah:

say if we look at our emergency rooms, I see our emergency room as the canary in the gold mine, right? We used to bring the canary down. It told 'em when we had bad air and you had to get out to save lives. Right now, our emergency rooms are stuffed over capacity. Wait times are 10, 12 hours in some of our Central Valley emergency rooms. But we can, and we are doing things at stand state to help alleviate this. So one of the most basic things we can do, which we know has long-term evidence-based to it, is we can take community members with lived experience and we can train them as community health work. And when they have lived experience, they come out of the communities that they serve in. They are that trusted messenger. And through community health worker programs, we can teach people how to do preventative care. Right. What is the long-term answer to this? Good, solid preventative care and better health decisions that people are making. Here's the reality. 80% of our healthcare has nothing to do with the doctor's office. It has everything to do with what we call the social determinants of health. This is our zip code effect. Where we live determines how long we're gonna live and how well we're gonna live here in the Central Valley. We don't do well. We don't have great life expectancy and we have lots of what we call morbidities. We don't have good quality of life, so we train community health workers at the Stockton campus of Stan State. We give 'em an 80 hour training program, and through that training program they can then get an MPI number and they can Medi-Cal reimburse for providing patient navigation and for providing preventative. Care and patient education. So that's step one is getting more people in our communities, even those who only have high school degrees involved in this conversation about health, what it means to be well, how to adequately, appropriately preventatively use health care to prevent these long-term storms. The second part is on the Stockton campus and at the Turlock campus, we provide education. Programs, right? We know a bachelor's degree is the greatest way to improve somebody's health, and the reason why is because they are going to earn more money than if they only had a high school diploma. We also know they're more likely to have employer provided healthcare, which means they're more likely to be using it. Preventatively, we also know it. All of those accumulate in just making sure they have a longer, healthier life expectancy. And the key to that really is building individual wealth capacity, building family wealth capacity, which builds our community wealth capacity. Which goes hand in hand with reducing what we call the social determinants of health. So we, on the Stockton campus and the Turlock campus, we have nursing programs and I'll let Wendy talk about the Turlock campus nursing programs.

Wendy:

Yeah, so our, we have a traditional pre-licensure program. We were just two semesters ago increasing our program by 10. Per cohort. So that's 20 per year. Doesn't sound like a lot, but it was a, it was a win for us. The problem that we have though, is clinical placements, right? Our clinical facilities are supporting all of our community colleges as well as us, and trying to find placements for all of these students. They're there 24 7, 7, you know, and so. We were able to increase that by 10 plus. We have our psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner program that just, this is our first semester, so we'll have that because along with all the other underserved areas, one of the biggest things is mental health in the Central Valley defined providers and, and as well as our family nurse practitioner program has two cohorts running as well. And then our Stockton campus has our A-S-B-S-N.

Frankie:

Yeah. And real quick, we've alluded to Turlock campus, Stockton campus. It's a two front war out here, or a two front effort, I should say, and Stockton is growing and it sounds like this is gonna be a very effective one-two punch. Uh, when it comes to this issue specifically.

Sarah:

Yeah, so I love that you point that out. So Stan State, we are one university, but we have two campuses. Our main campus is down here in Turlock, where we have mo, uh, many of our traditional undergraduate traditional students up in the Stockton campus. We have a branch campus, and that branch campus really is focused on what we call the new majority non-traditional student. So these are students who. For a number of reasons. Can't go to a traditional dorm style university setting. Our students largely transfer from our local community colleges where they then come to the campus to do their degree completion, their bachelor's degree completion on the nursing front. Aligned with that, we actually have an accelerated second bachelor's in nursing program where students earn their bachelor's degree in any field that they want, any major that they want. And then they complete the nursing pre-reqs and they can come and finish an RN degree in 18 months. And again, what this allows us to do is through the traditional programs, really we're serving Stanis Law County and the surrounding, uh, counties to Stanis Law and with the accelerated second bachelor's in nursing program. We have that focus up in Stockton and San Joaquin County. Like you said, that one, two punch

Frankie:

and classes are full. Right. Enrollment's not an issue.

Wendy:

Yes, some, several of our programs are actually impacted, so a lot more applicants than we can accept

Frankie:

unfortunately. And will that change as Stockton continues to grow? I know there's some construction going on on that campus.

Sarah:

Yeah, so it's an exciting time in Stockton. We have, uh, doubled our enrollment and we anticipate a further doubling of that enrollment. With that, we are building a brand new state of the art. Classroom building, which includes a brand new health and human services training center that will include a 16 bed skills lab and it will include a 13 bed physical diagnoses lab and a two bed high fidelity simulation suite. This actually will allow us to expand that accelerated bachelor, second bachelor's in nursing program with Wendy and her team. We're super excited to be expanding that.

Frankie:

Wendy, can you go into detail about what those labs are, what the students are learning, how it differs from a traditional classroom setting where you're just sitting at a desk.

Wendy:

It's really all about hands-on. So how do we know that students can connect what they're learning from the textbook and then apply it at the bedside with the patient safely? Right. So simulation is that middle piece to competency. So they learn something in the classroom, they come to the sim lab, and we either provide a scenario that is something that is a high risk, but low frequency, like a postpartum hemorrhage or something they're gonna see all the time, like diabetes, right? Very common in the Central Valley. So we. Train our students to, in the sim simulation labs, which there are scenarios that are either based upon true cases that we've experienced as nurses at the bedside, and we let them take care of the patient as if they are the nurse. No guidance, like in the hospital, of course, you're guided by a nurse, but in the simulation lab you get to make your own decisions. You get to make your own errors, you get to have your own successes and learn from those before actually going into the, into the hospital. And all of our programs use simulation.

Frankie:

When did simulation labs become standard or become like a, a common offering, whether it be San State or just overall health education across the country?

Wendy:

We kind of copied aviation and the military. Uh, and then it came into nursing probably, uh, 20 2007 maybe, is when it started becoming, you know, used. And now it's, it's very common, very standardized. You can get accredited in simulation and nursing education. Uh, all of our team is certified in simulation education, so it's, it's a very big part, especially with all of this new competency based, right? When our students graduate, we're saying they are competent to care for a patient at the bedside, and we know that because of X, Y, and Z. So they had class, they had sim and they had bedside patient. Care

Frankie:

and bedside manner is very important, right?

Wendy:

Absolutely. Yes. So it's not just skill. How do you talk to the patient? How do you educate the patient? How do you find clues to help you end up, like we even make some games of it. Like we do escape rooms in simulations. So the students have to, if they do the right things, they find the right clues and they. They provide the right care. And so it's, it's team-based. So students are never on their own. And just like in the hospital, you're never on your own. You always have someone that you can call to for help. And we just, I mean, our students at the end of our program say, please put more simulation. They just absolutely love it how it prepares them. And I was the same way as a brand new grad. I worked on an ICU step down for cardiac patients every day. I went to work so scared. Every day. I just knew today was the day that my patient was gonna code and I wouldn't know what to do. The director of our unit brought in a simulation team and they did a simulation called the first five minutes of a code. After that day, honestly never, I was never scared again because I knew what to do. And so I became a firm believer in simulation, and I have a lot of passion about simulation, and I've brought that to the students. And in the beginning, they don't wanna do it. They don't want to be looked at, they don't wanna be quote unquote judged. By the end of the program, they said, please throw as much simulation as you can at me. I love that example, Wendy,

Sarah:

because when I show people the sim center, that is always the example I use is nobody wants to be a nurse's first code. Correct.

Wendy:

I don't,

Sarah:

no. Right. No. Nobody ever wants to volunteer to be, oh, sure. Go ahead. I'll be the first one you've ever shocked.

Frankie:

Are there any other programs that we didn't mention being offered?

Wendy:

Yes, we have a health science program. So that's a bachelor's degree program. We also have an RN to BSN. So if you're already an RN with an associate's degree, you can come to our RN to BSN program. That's a year long program. And we have sequential enrollment, which is if you're in an A DN program, you can take classes for your bachelor's and then come into the the rn. So we have. The psych mental health, the family nurse practitioner, health science A-S-B-S-N, pre-licensure. And just to kind of clarify,

Sarah:

so family nurse practitioner or psychiatric nurse practitioner, this is a master's level, uh, training that nurses get. And what it allows them to do is function as primary care providers. And again, we started the conversation by talking about we have a huge shortage of primary care providers. And so not only is the nursing program at Stan State, at both campuses. Is helping to produce more nurses by producing more initial licensure RNs or nurses. We're also building the pipeline to train more nurse practitioners, which then close that primary care gap. That, again, that primary care gap is leading to our emergency room over usage. And then I really wanna shout out to Wendy and her team for developing the psychiatric nurse prep. Because that is so critical here in the Central Valley. So here in the Central Valley, not only are we many of our communities are medically underserved, our communities are also underserved in mental health. We have some of the lowest ratios of mental health providers in all of California. That includes on the medical side, being able to manage the medications that go with mental health. And that's where the psychiatric nurse practitioners can help fill that gap of providing medication management, which is a huge need in the region. Along those lines. Stan State also has a Master's in Social Work program, and that Master's in Social Work Program trains behavioral health providers because lcs WS is what we call them, they actually can provide behavioral health therapy services. So we have three different formats for the MSW program. The traditional daytime program is. Traditional daytime in person is down here in Turlock, and then we have two different formats up on the Stockton campus. We have a hybrid program where students come one Saturday a month and then they come and then they attend class at night on Zoom and it's a two year program. And then we just launched in fall of 2024. We launched our part-time three year evening only program, and again, that really feeds the need for behavioral healthcare providers. In addition, Stan stayed on the Turlock campus. They have a licensed marriage and family therapist master's program, and they have a master's and a licensed professional clinical counseling.

Frankie:

Are these programs set up to allow, uh, these students to also work at the same time? How many students at Stan State are also working at local hospitals or healthcare centers while they're studying?

Wendy:

Quite a few of our students are working absolutely. And. Like I said, in August of 2026, we're going to give more points to students that are CSU students. We're also increasing our points for students that have healthcare experience. So I think that number will even rise more because we want students to come into nursing, understanding what nursing is. And so if they're already working in some type of healthcare setting, we know that they know what they're getting into and we're not going to have attrition as much. Attrition, not that we have very much anyway, but just, you know, so they know what they're getting into. And have an idea of the work that's gonna be involved with becoming a nurse.

Frankie:

We've talked about pipelines, the pipeline into Stan State seems to be full, like, you know, there's no problem with that. What about the pipeline out? What's the rate of completion?

Wendy:

Oh, most of our students pass, pass. Yeah. Very little attrition. And we have a, this last cycle we had a hundred percent NCLEX pass rate. So our pass rates are really, really good.

Frankie:

Chipping away at that problem little by little. Yes. You're year by ear, right? Of

Sarah:

course. Yes. I was gonna say, so traditionally, once you get into a healthcare program, the completion rate, the graduation rate, those are all very high and they're very high for a number of reasons. Including your creditor requires that you have good high completion rates, but also because. It's very competitive to get into these programs, and once you're in the program wraps the students in resources. Now, on a more global level, here at Stan State, over 70% of our students are first generation. Over 70% receive Pell Grants. Uh, what that means is many of our students are working, they're working part-time, some of them are working full-time, and that doesn't stop when they get into one of these professional health programs.

Frankie:

In Donna's article, there's a story about a student, Ted Elijah, an A SBN student, who was able to connect with one of his patients. The patient saw the dance state patch on his uniform, said, Hey, I, I went there, I go there. I'm a stand state warrior, and instantly he was put at ease. Are there any stories, any personal stories or anecdotes you could share about this happening elsewhere here in the Central Valley?

Wendy:

Recently I was, I'll share a personal story. I was, I had a, a gallbladder issue, uh, and I fainted and I went to the er, uh, my doctor's office, you know, called an ambulance, went to the er, my nurse in the ER was one of our patients. Then I had to go to the or, and my nurse in the, OR was one of our patients, or one of our students, I'm sorry, one of our students on the floor every day. I was there for two days. My nurses were our students and so we're doing great work and we're keeping nurses in the community and I was not scared for a second. Okay, so that says a lot about the students that we're putting out, right? The nurses that we're putting out, they did amazing. Every single one of them did took fantastic care of me. And I've heard these from other faculty as well, like they're hospitalized for one reason or another. Our students are their nurses and they're just doing fabulous work out there. So I can absolutely share that story and know that we are doing really good work.

Frankie:

You're literally putting your money where your mouth is. Right? You taught them and now they're treating you.

Sarah:

Exactly. And, and I guess I'll, I'll take the more global look at. This. Uh, so we started by talking a little bit about health inequities and social determinants of health. Here's what we know. If we're gonna improve health outcomes, we need to diversify our healthcare workforce. We know the best way to improve patient outcomes, patient adherence, patient compliance. Is to have a provider that looks like them and that comes from the same community. And that's what we do at Stan State. When we grow local, train local, keep local, we are keeping our local community members in the communities in which they serve.

Frankie:

And that's really important when you consider Stockton's Place in the Central Valley, right. That area is one of the most diverse and fastest growing in the whole state of California. Exactly. Can't just be you two. Right. And the other instructors, there's gotta be community partners or community programs. Can you share some details about what's going on and what you have established for these students?

Wendy:

Yes, there's for myself included. Loans, helping students with scholarships and loans. One of the major contributors to our success is Song Brown. Uh, they help with all of our simulation supplies, all of our extras that help with education. We also have a relationship with Legacy Health and they provide scholarships for our students. They've paid for books and tuition and for myself and many of the other students that have gone through these programs.'cause I'm a alum from Stan State as well. I did my bachelor's here, my master's here. You know, student loans is what helps us get through the program. We couldn't do it without them. So without this funding, without these, these, um, for us, legacy, health Song, brown, um, Kaiser, um, gift scholarships to some students, they couldn't go forth and conquer. They would have to be working and not going to school. So this money really helps the students help us focus and help us put more practitioners out there. Yeah.

Sarah:

I think one of the unique things here in the Central Valley is, uh, up in San Joaquin County, there was a community health leadership council that was made up of CEOs of our local, um, healthcare facilities. And, uh, several years back they. Put together what became HealthForce Partners. And HealthForce Partners is a nonprofit that really serves at that intersection trying to bridge healthcare needs with higher education institutions to build a strong, stable workforce and a strong stable. Pipeline into the workforce. So HealthForce Partners, while they started in San Joaquin, they're down in Stanislau County and they're expanding beyond into other counties. But they've been really critical in pulling together these consortium of Stan State, um, our local community colleges that are also training those a DN nurses, associate degree nurses, and leveraging that with the state of California to bring in grants. And those grants specifically provide scholarships. So HealthForce Partners provide scholarships for our initial licensure nursing students. They provide scholarships to our f and p family, nurse practitioner students, and they're providing scholarships to our MSW students as well as providing that, um, critical clinical supervision piece for our MSW students.

Frankie:

You two are, um. Breathing some hope into me, uh, between what Stan State's doing and then also the, uh, the partnerships That future looks a little less bleak than what I mentioned earlier. So with that in mind, what are some of the things you see on the horizon that we can all look forward to?

Sarah:

So I can speak from the Stockton campus. We are so looking forward to, hopefully in the next six months, opening our new building and really bringing folks in to experience this new health and human services training center and getting some experience understanding health career pathways. I think, uh, we are again expanding. We have a grant, a we will grant that comes through uc, Merced. Comes through the state of California and through that we will grant, we have a, uh, we will coordinator who's actually one of our health sciences alum, she goes out into the high schools and she starts talking about health career pathways in the high school in the six months between January and June this year, she reached 1500 students. And these are students, Stockton students, largely San Joaquin Valley students who would not otherwise have had that experience of what careers are out there in healthcare. And as a first gen student, I know how important that is to have somebody out there. You know, I was a first gen student. I knew you could be a doctor or a nurse. I didn't know anything about being a rad tech. I knew nothing about ultrasound. I knew nothing about clinical lab sciences. I, I didn't know. Pt, ot, speech language pathology. I didn't know any of these pathways, so I'm looking forward to seeing her continue and grow that program. We also have a six week health career opportunity program that we host. We just wrapped up, last Friday we had 24 San Joaquin Valley students who spent six weeks learning about health careers that included five. Field trips on a bus over to Toro University in Vallejo, where they did stop the bleed. They did a Narcan simulation, they did a gunshot simulation, really learning about careers in pharmacy, in medicine, um, in a pa, a physician assistant program, really opening up their opportunities.

Wendy:

There's a lot of different pathways, right? There's many programs for one, but there's a lot of different pathways to nursing. Like traditionally, it'd be like, oh, well you have to be a 4.0 student and you have to, you know, it's like right outta high school to be a nurse and all of these things. A lot of times the students in our program are nursing was plan B, right? They already had a whole career as. You know, one of our applicants right now is one of my, my daughter's past teachers. You don't have to envision nursing in that way. If you go onto our website, it says Pathways to nursing. You can see a whole algorithm of the different ways into nursing, as well as all the other programs that we offer and all the programs that Sarah has just mentioned.

Sarah:

Yeah, and I, I also wanna share that while the programs are impacted, the growth in the programs, our ability to grow programs isn't limited by us, it's limited by our clinical placement opportunities. So really it's, it's that need in the Central Valley to increase our clinical capacity. What the Central Valley doesn't need is a for-profit nursing program to come in and. Say they're going to train hundreds of students a year, because the reality is we don't have the clinical capacity to do that. So we really need to work as a region on partnering better with our healthcare partners to prioritize bringing our own local students to do those critical clinical hours. If you're gonna have a nurse, you want a nurse who has spent hours at the bedside, right? You don't want a new nurse who's had limited clinical experience. So again, it's our clinical capacity and if we could continue to grow that clinical capacity. We will continue to grow the size of our nursing program in the same way our community college partners have continued to do that, right? We don't work in competition with our community college partners. We work in collaboration with them to grow our local capacity as much as possible. Agreed 100%. Let's grow our own.

Frankie:

Is there a a projected rate of growth that you guys are targeting or looking for, or is it more just kind of we're establishing these programs, we're pumping out the students into the pipeline, and then we're gonna see how things naturally grow?

Wendy:

There is a bare minimum, but as as much as we can grow, we would like to grow and all currently all of our programs that we have are either at max or growing, and I'm so excited to see where our psych mental health nurse practitioner program goes. Really excited to see that increase in enrollment. Right now. I think we have seven in that program, so we'd really like to see that. And the word's gonna get out. This is our first go around, but. Yeah,

Sarah:

I think some of, at least on the Stockton campus, some of the, the growth has been an infrastructure need on our own campus, and that's where the opening of this new building with this new training center is going to allow us to hopefully double our numbers and bring in a second cohort. And again, we're working closely with our hospital partners to ensure we have enough. Clinical spots, and that really is our biggest barrier is those clinical, the commitments for the clinical. But with that, I wanna, I wanna make sure Wendy and I shout out, we could not do this without our partners across the two regions, right? We couldn't do this without Dignity St. Joseph's committing to our students, San Joaquin General Hospital. Hospital Damerin, um, Adventist Health and Lodi,

Wendy:

um, Memorial Doctor's Medical Center, Emanuel Medical Center. They're so accommodating and work with us, all of our crazy schedules and, and, um, and as well as our faculty. Faculty are extremely hard to, to come by. I mean, there. Going to school to become a nurse educator is a very, you know, small piece of options. And so we, we, we also need to grow nurse faculty as well.

Frankie:

Let's shout out some of those faculty members right now. Why not? There might be prospective students who, uh, want to enter one of these programs and if they can get an idea of who will be instructing them and, and what they can expect.

Wendy:

Oh my goodness, what if I leave somebody out?

Frankie:

Oh, that's always, that's always the fear, right? I,

Sarah:

I, I was gonna say, I can start from. Stockton because I have a small number. So really, um, Veronica Peele, who is the director of our A-S-B-S-M program, Michelle Perri Ryan, who's the director of that Bachelor's in health science, as well as the FMP director and then Sherry Roper who runs the RN to BSN. Program, which again, is critical in that pipeline to the FMP.

Wendy:

And then Dr. Rist, who is our current director. Um, she was my bachelor's faculty, she was my master's faculty. She was my mentor during my PhD. So she has been around a long time and she's really brought our programs and helped us grow and helped us get into the Stockton, the building. The Stockton building is a tremendous amount of effort on her part as well. I mean, I, we have so many faculty. I love them all and I wish them. To stay with us forever. Tell all your friends to come be with us, but I would not like to mention them by name because I will leave somebody out. I know it.

Frankie:

It's understandable.

Wendy:

Yes, there's a lot,

Sarah:

but

Wendy:

we got the directors

Sarah:

in there.

Frankie:

What gives you two hope about the future of healthcare in our region?

Wendy:

I think the good nurses we're putting out the good healthcare providers we're putting out, we do an excellent job. I know that that sounds, you know, a little boisterous, whatever you wanna call it, but we do put out really, really good providers of care. We really do, and we're creating a great community of providers and I. I feel very confident in that. And, um, the fact that we are shedding a light on it, focusing on it, having a plan for it, and not just saying this is a problem and not putting, you know, our feet to the ground and, and creating a solution for it. And again,

Sarah:

largely I speak for San Joaquin County, I think really in San Joaquin County. It's the fact that. We have players across the board who are at the table who want to be part of this solution and who are putting money behind it, right? We have the CEOs of our healthcare who put together HealthForce partners and that whole vision of HealthForce partners helping provide that bridge and helping to close that gap between healthcare needs and academic institution needs. I think it's our partnership with the community colleges that are feeding us. Those pipelines that are so important. You know, we have United Way of San Joaquin that really has brought together public health and the healthcare partners with the Stockton campus in order to raise up the opportunities locally at the Stockton campus. I have to totally shout out Health Plan of San Joaquin, who provided $1.3 million to train community health workers starting at the very beginning of that Health force. Pipeline, right? This is where we take people with lived experience to help people in their communities better navigate our healthcare system. So for me, the hope comes when I sit around a table of people who are healthcare executives there, Wendy and her amazing team. It's Polly and her amazing team in the ms. W program. We're sitting down with Genevieve, Genevieve Valentine, and the new Be Well campus. That's gonna be a mental health campus up in San Joaquin County. We are working across what our traditional silos in a non-competitive way in order to be the change that we need. We're not waiting for somebody to come in and rescue us. We're working together to be that change.

Frankie:

With that concept of action in mind, aside from enrolling in in one of these programs and trying to become a healthcare professional, how can listeners become part of this regional change to try and fix the issue of access and medical scarcity here in the valley?

Sarah:

I would say, again, reach out to us at Stan State because we have lots of opportunities to come and volunteer. We have ways to serve on panels. We would love for our alum to get even more engaged than they are. There's opportunities we, like I said, we had lots our. First generation students are over 70% of our population. We have a need for internships. We have a need for mentorship. Reach out to your local nonprofits and find a way to volunteer, donate, donate your time, donate services, donate goods to our local nonprofits, because when we really talk about health inequities, those that are most impacted are those who are most under-resourced. And so our nonprofits really sit. At the front line of providing services and helping get our community members to primary care and keeping them out of the emergency room. So there are always opportunities.

Frankie:

That sounds amazing. Before we leave, before we end this podcast, any final thoughts?

Sarah:

I think we are living in an age where there is a lot of anti higher ed rhetoric going on, and I think we really need everybody to understand that a college degree. Boost your overall lifetime earnings, you will earn over a million dollars more a year. If you have a bachelor's degree. Compared to a high school diploma, you are more likely to own a home. And owning a home is critical to generational wealth capacity. You will have, as I spoke about earlier, improved health outcomes, increased life expectancy, and really stand state with our campus in Turlock and our branch campus in Stockton, we really. Are building individual wealth capacity. We are building family wealth capacity, and we are building community wealth capacity. And I say this as a first gen student myself, right? I'm a first gen student and my daughter just graduated from medical school in May, and she did that because this is the power of education in a family. I came specifically to the stock. Campus because we need to get our community bachelor degree attainment from 16 to 18% up to the 35%. That's the California and national average at Stan State, this is where we change lives. We are ranked number two for social mobility. Our students, on average, upon graduation with a four year degree, can pay back their loans in 0.7 of a year. Not even a full year and they can pay back their loans. We are ranked, I think number nine for best public. Universities, and I wanna say it's number four for best bang for your Bach. So this is where we are changing trajectories, right? This is where every day I come in with really the privilege to be able to make

Wendy:

an impact. As Sarah mentioned, her being a first gen graduate. I am myself and many of our students are as well, as far as our holistic admissions that we're implementing next summer. I just wanted to add, there are several ways that. People can get points to come into our program. Right. I already mentioned healthcare experience, but another thing is bilingual. So to match the diverse population that we have in the Central Valley, a lot of our students are speaking languages other than English, and so they also get points for those. We are a Hispanic serving institution, and so this kind of lends very well with serving our population, having students from our communities, and then serving patients in our communities that match. Their backgrounds and, and provide better care for our patients in this area.

Frankie:

Great discussion. Valuable discussion. I think obviously this is gonna be, uh, an effort that continues into the future. I can't wait to see the new facilities in Stockton. I can't wait to see how these programs grow, and I can't wait to see more and more Warrior graduates each time commencement rolls around.

Wendy:

Thank

Frankie:

you. Go Warriors. Once again, big thank you to Dr. Sarah Schweitzer and Dr. Wendy Matthew for joining us on the Stan State EdCast. If your interest was peaked by that discussion, we will provide any and all important links in the episode description As for this episode and past episodes of the Stan State EdCast. And other podcasts produced here on the campus of Stanislau State. You can go to CSU stand.edu/podcasts. You can also follow and subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform. So until the next episode of the Stan State EdCast, I'm your host, Frankie Tovar. Thank you for listening.