WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Vermont Youth Called to Health Care Careers

Vermont Youth Called to Health Care Careers

Swanton, Vermont - October 12, 2007

Vermont faces the twin problems of slow economic growth and an exodus of its younger workforce. The state also has a growing shortage of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals.

That's why Gov. Jim Douglas proclaimed Health Care Career Awareness Month, a non-partisan effort to head off a shortage of medical professionals. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) joined a panel of experts to encourage young people to enter the medical profession. They addressed a student assembly at Missisquoi Valley Union High School.

"All over our state and all over our country there are shortages of medical personnel, especially in rural areas like the state of Vermont," Sanders said.

With an aging population that will become even more in need of health care in the future, Vermont's shortage of medical professionals is especially acute. David Reynolds, Sanders' Senior Health Policy Advisor, told Channel 3, "It's becoming more and more difficult to find them because there's not enough being trained."

Reynolds is a medical doctor who started one of Vermont's first community health centers in the Northeast Kingdom thirty years ago. Reynolds and other medical professionals say one big problem is the high cost of medical school, on top of college. "People are coming out of schools with major debt," Reynolds noted. "And so that often encourages them to pursue more specialty care because that's a more lucrative profession."

Sanders noted that Congress has expanded Pell grants for college students and said he'll push legislation to forgive student loan debt in exchange for public service. He said this would encourage young doctors to serve at community health centers instead of going for the highest paid medical specialties.

After hearing the panel, some of the students at MVU said they're interested. Lacie Dufresne, an MVU Junior, said, "I want to go into a health career one day, actually to be a surgeon."

Heidi Elliott, an MVU Senior, also told Channel 3, "Like one of the speakers said, you can pretty much know you're guaranteed a job anywhere these days, so I was actually looking to go to college in New York but then come back to Vermont."

That's what state officials like to hear. As MVU Principal ChaunceBenedict put it, "Kids listen when it's authentic." Having a panel of people who actually work in health care seems to have pointed at least some students in that direction.

Andy Potter -- WCAX