Curing the local doctor shortage: An inside look at medical university in Ivins

Written by Chris Reed
May 1, 2023

IVINS — As Southern Utah grows, residents are finding one thing growing more difficult: Getting time with a primary care doctor. Either it could be a matter of months to get an appointment time or those without a doctor see those four dreaded words: “not accepting new patients.”

Part of the “Cut Suit” worn by one student filled with simulated blood and fluids while other students in a lab at Rocky Vista University practice as if they are an actual patient, Ivins, Utah, April 6, 2023 | Photo by Chris Reed, St. George News

Officials at Rocky Vista University in Ivins say they are hoping to change that, not only training the next generation of doctors but keeping them in town.

“The critical shortages are in primary care, and particularly in rural areas,” Kristine Jenkins, director of campus operations, said. “So that’s kind of our focus in our mission is to try to produce as many primary care docs as we can and get them out into rural settings. And places like Ivins are considered rural settings.” 

“Our next mission is, ‘Let’s try to get some back here,’” she added.

In 2021, the nearly six-year-old Ivins campus graduated its first class of osteopathic doctors, who have gone on to their first residencies around the country. Jenkins says the school is now meeting with St. George Regional Hospital to see what opportunities the next graduates may have to stay in Southern Utah.

St. George News was provided a tour around the Ivins campus from the labs to the twin 220-seat auditoriums to simulation rooms. It wasn’t a crowded day – students were mostly on break or at the tail-end of finals – but something quickly apparent was how a university opened in the 21st century utilizes 21st-century technology. 

Against the backdrop of Ivins’ red mountains, the 104,000-square foot facility was opened as the second Rocky Vista campus after the first was opened in the Denver suburb of Parker, Colorado, as the nation’s first private, for-profit health sciences school to offer a professional medical degree since 1910.

But Ivins is not considered a satellite campus to the one in Colorado. Thanks to modern networking technology, both campuses act as one. A professor conducting a lecture in Ivins can teach students in a Colorado classroom at the same time, and vice versa. Conceivably, both large auditoriums and multiple classrooms in both Utah and Colorado can host the same lecture at the same time.

Inside a classroom at Rocky Vista University, Ivins, Utah, April 6, 2023 | Photo by Chris Reed, St. George News

The campus web will grow by one in July when the third Rocky Vista campus takes in its first students in Billings, Montana, though that will be considered a branch campus. Parker and Ivins will continue to operate as one unit.  

“We have to be in absolute sync. If I’m sitting here as a student, I can ask a question from a faculty member in Colorado and they can respond. And same goes back and forth so you can hear the other students ask questions,” said Jenkins, who added that all lectures are recorded and uploaded to a central site students could access. 

That means there are times, especially late in the semester, when students may prefer to take in lectures in the comfort of their pajamas and dorms. 

“The students never show up for lectures here because they can watch them and listen to them at one and a half to two times the speed,” Jenkins said. 

The Ivins campus was three years old when the pandemic struck, and just as COVID-19 permanently changed some techniques and procedures in hospitals, it also did the same in medical schools like Rocky Vista. 

Inside one of two identical auditoriums at Rocky Vista University, Ivins, Utah, April 6, 2023 | Photo by Chris Reed, St. George News

“We learned a lot about curriculum delivery,” Jenkins said. “Faculty used to all come to campus and now a lot of them don’t. We have created places where they can record their lectures. We’ve got some that have chronic illnesses that have never come back to campus. Their lectures are all prepared remotely.”

But the act of not going to the lecture hall isn’t out of laziness. Medical school can take the life out of someone. Jenkins said she remembers her own son looking clean and groomed in his first year of medical school transforming into a 5-o’-clock shadow creature by his third. 

“School is so difficult. Like … the first two years particularly, the studying is so intense,” Jenkins said. “And so if they can do it at home and they can take a lecture at one and a half times speed, time is like the most valuable thing in their lives right now because a successful med student spends between 15 and 18 hours a day studying.”

The pandemic changed the ultimate design of the third campus in Montana. It doesn’t have the big auditoriums like those in Ivins, which were recently used by the Ivins City Council for its town halls. 

“Instead of auditoriums, they have rooms that can be reconfigured in a number of ways based on the learning,” Jenkins said. “Kind of a tabletop studying thing. So we learned from the pandemic.” 

Slabs of artificial skin help medical students at Rocky Vista University practice inserting IVs, Ivins, Utah, April 6, 2023 | Photo by Chris Reed, St. George News

Going through some of the classrooms and labs on the Rocky Vista Ivins campus, one might see rows of long surgical tables as well as rooms that simulate emergency rooms, intensive care units and neonatal units. It includes actual equipment donated by the St. George Surgical Center and other local medical facilities that would have just discarded old, used equipment into the trash. 

Some of the labs include what look like mannequins from Dillard’s. But these are more expensive than the usual department store dummies and have parts inside that simulate the blood and guts of a human body.

This includes a mannequin that simulates childbirth. 

“She can be programmed to simulate these births,” Jenkins said. “She’s got a cartridge and we can load the babies. You load the baby in the cartridge in all different ways, whatever you’re trying to simulate.”

In one lab, there are rows of fake skin where students can practice putting in IVs. There is also what is called a “Cut Suit.”

“A student will put this on and you see you have all this material between them and it’s also got gut packs and things in it,” Jenkins said. “So we can buy blood bags and gut packs and then it has a skin on it and they’ll wear it and then they can simulate surgeries.”

But all the technology still can’t substitute for the real thing. That includes practicing on pigs’ feet and skin, which can approximate human parts.

Outside the Gross Anatomy Lab at Rocky Vista University, Ivins, Utah, April 6, 2023 | Photo by Chris Reed, St. George News

The facility also includes actual deceased humans in the gross anatomy lab, which is sealed off from the rest of the campus with its own power and backups to maintain a 58-degree temperature with no cracks or breaks.

Inside are 21 donated bodies and a stage up front for an instructor. All of the floors are specially treated to remain sanitary. 

Jenkins said students and staff treat the gross anatomy lab and its contents as a sacred place.

“We take it very seriously,” Jenkins said. “At the end of the year, the students run a ceremony. Even though they don’t know the names, they provide tributes.”

The donated bodies come from the University of Utah, the only program in the state certified to receive donated bodies. 

“People will walk in here – we actually had a lot when we opened – and we would get elderly people to say, ‘Oh, I’m so excited for the school. I want to donate my body.’ That’s not how it works,” Jenkins said. “So we give them the information for the University of Utah.”

Donations go back the other way. 

Inside a simulated neonatal intensive care unit for medical students to practice hands-on at Rocky Vista University, Ivins, Utah, April 6, 2023 | Photo by Chris Reed, St. George News

Across the street from the campus is a family medicine clinic that opened last August providing care to people in the community. It is a place for Rocky Vista students to train after their second year, though the training at the clinic isn’t necessarily of the medical variety, it involves paperwork. 

“They learn how to sit with the front desk and how they sign someone in and what questions they ask,” Jenkins said. “They need to know the business of medicine.”

Updated May 2, 2:30 p.m. – Correcting “catsuit” with the correct term of Cut Suit, additional fixes.

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Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2023, all rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Reed serves as a reporter for St. George News, where he has been honored with several awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for his work, including first-place accolades. He started his journalism career as a sports reporter and editor in Southern California where he once compared shoe sizes with Shaquille O'Neal and exchanged mix tapes with members of the Los Angeles Kings. After growing up in the San Fernando Valley learning karate skills from Mr. Miyagi and spending a decade in Las Vegas mostly avoiding the casinos, he came to St. George for love and married his soulmate, a lifetime Southern Utah resident. He is the proud father of two boys, his youngest a champion against both autism and Type 1 diabetes.

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @STGNews

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