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Photo by Michele Manske
Dunwoody will be training students to become physical therapist assistants as part of its new health sciences and technology degree programs.
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Forging new ground in healthcare education
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By Sarah McKenzie
Dunwoody unveiling new health sciences and technology degree programs to prepare students for high-growth sector
Dunwoody College of Technology is going to be the first school in the country to offer a four-year degree program in health information focusing on electronic records management.
Beginning this fall, the college on the edge of Downtown will be offering degree programs in the following areas: health information management, radiologic technology, medical laboratory technician and physical therapist assistant.
Healthcare technology is one of the bright spots in the Twin Cities economy with strong job growth in the sector expected in coming years. Across the country, the health care information technology employment fields are growing at a clip of about 36 percent a year, according to U.S. Department of Labor Statistics.
“In an uncertain economy, thousands of Minnesotans are looking for new job skills and discovering that health technology careers are growing,” said Dr. Richard Wagner, president-elect of Dunwoody, in a statement announcing the new programs. “We created these programs with immediate employment for graduates in mind, and we are forging industry alliances with Minnesota’s biggest health care employers to ensure Dunwoody graduates are well positioned for success in their respective fields.”
Dunwoody has also forged a new partnership with North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale. The hospital has transferred sponsorship of its radiologic training program to the college. Clinical work, however, will continue to take place at North Memorial.
Radiologic technologists perform X-ray, MRI and other radiologic procedures. They can earn up to $35 an hour in Minnesota. By 2014, there will be about 8,000 job openings for trained radiologic technologists across the country, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
As for the health informatics program, Dunwoody students will learn how to collect, code and analyze patient data. Trained health information technicians can earn up to $23 an hour. Career opportunities in this area are expected to grow by more than 30 percent in the next six years.
For students enrolled in the four-year program, the curriculum will cover the basics of medical sciences, medical data sets and classification systems, statistics, e-law and data mining, among other things, said Carla Pogliano, who will oversee Dunwoody’s health informatics program.
In addition to the four-year bachelor of applied science degree in health informatics, Dunwoody will offer a two-year bachelor’s completion program for eligible students and a 60-credit health care data analyst certificate.
“The program is unique in that it really focuses on Dunwoody strengths,” Pogliano said.
There will be small class sizes, flexible class schedules and a blend of online and classroom work to accommodate non-traditional students.
“We’re creating pathways for both medical professionals to learn this electronic side of record keeping, and we’re also creating certificates for IT professionals to get the medical side,” Wagner said.
Dunwoody students who enroll in the physical therapist assistant program will be trained for jobs to help patients improve their mobility after an illness or injury.
Medical laboratory technician students will learn how to work with physicians and medical researchers on laboratory testing, treatment and disease diagnosis.
The idea for the new
program offerings came as school leaders were engaged
in strategic planning.
“We came to the realization that we needed to add another platform to the college to round out our portfolio of offerings,” Wagner said. “We’ve been very strong in manufacturing, automotive and transportation — but one of the things that we saw was there was a direct absence of anything in the health sciences technology area, which is the fastest growing occupation area in the Twin Cities.”
The school also hopes to attract more women to the college with the new course offerings. Dunwoody’s enrollment is about 1,500 students, and women only make up about 10 percent of the student body.
Dunwoody was founded in 1914. It’s a private, nonprofit institution that has educated and trained more than 250,000 students.
To accommodate the new health sciences and technology programs, the campus is being reconfigured to make way for a new Health Technology Corridor. The college is working on creating lab spaces that will be as similar to industry settings as possible.
Wagner said the programs will “bring something new to the health education landscape.”
“We don’t just create programs to create programs,” he said. “We create programs to help business and industry.”
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Combating cancer
UPDATED August 30, 2010, 11:42am
By Dylan Thomas
Decorated in neutral tones and blond wood flooring, the infusion room at the Hennepin Comprehensive Cancer Center was designed to feel calm and welcoming to the roughly 500 patients who receive chemotherapy treatments there each year. Center Manager Kelly Porter said one session may run up to six hours, so patients — who receive their infusions in recliners in one of 11 small patient bays ringing the room — are made to feel comfortable. They read, watch TV or, like 48-year-old Desiree Jackson of Minneapolis, three months into chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer in March, simply relax as much as possible. “I just try to nod off a little,” Jackson said. “I just like to get it done and over with.” From his desk in the center of
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The poison patrol
UPDATED August 30, 2010, 11:39am
By Dylan Thomas
A typical call to the Hennepin Regional Poison Center begins at a home on laundry day. A parent pours out a cup of bleach, preparing to add it to the wash. The phone rings and the parent leaves to answer it. A child reaches up for cup of the clear liquid. We’ll let poison center Managing Director Debbie Anderson take over from here: “A child takes a swig [and] they immediately throw up. So, what do parents do? They panic; they call 911.” Anderson said that call would be patched through to her call center in HCMC, where a staff of specially trained pharmacists and pharmacy students take calls 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The staffer would assure the parent vomiting was
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Savvy about sleep
By jake weyer
There’s little question that folks today are hooked on finding ways to stay awake. The massive collection of energy drinks on display in a room at the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center is a testament to that. Voluntary sleep deprivation, not surprisingly, is the most common cause of drowsiness during the day. Neurologist Mark Mahowald, director of the center, sees it all the time. “People always ask, ‘well how do you know if you’re sleep deprived?’ Our first question is, ‘do you use an alarm clock to wake up in the morning?’ If you use an alarm clock, you are by definition sleep deprived because if your brain had collected as much sleep as it needed, you would have awakened before the alarm went off,” he said.
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Triage time
By Sarah McKenzie
No one wants to end up here. But if you do end up in HCMC’s Emergency Department, you’re in place that has a long and successful track record in trauma care. The department, housed in the hospital’s Red Building, 730 S. 8th St., takes up an entire city block and has six specialized team centers. In 1989, HCMC became the first hospital in the state certified as a Level I Trauma Center by the American College of Surgeons. The distinction means that the hospital has significant operating room capacity and surgeons available to deliver emergency medical care trained in a variety of specialties. The hospital’s Emergency Department is the busiest in the state with more than 100,000 visits a year, said Michelle Noltimier, director
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Fruit-themed hallways and anti-smoking posters
By Cristof Traudes
Welcome to the part of HCMC that handles severe accidents but also cuts, scrapes and bruises, the part that deals with burn victims and pregnancy but also tonsil trouble and literacy. This is “peeds” — as staffers of pediatrics call it — where health care is only half of the story. Anybody up to age 18 is sent to the department and sometimes 21-year-olds are, too. As a result, peeds is set up much like a tentative parent — to entertain and educate wee ones but steer clear (as much as possible) from stepping on the toes of teens. It’s a department with yellow walls and fruit-themed hallways in one section and sleek grey walls and self esteem-boosting posters in another. Every child that walks through the door is given a
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Politics. Change. Prevention.
By Cristof Traudes
// Art Gonzalez talks about the health care landscape, General Assistance Medical Care and the future //
Art Gonzalez, CEO of Hennepin County Medical Center, sees change on the horizon. More than just health insurance is getting an overhaul; the way hospitals will be graded on success is, too. In the second and final part of his interview with the Downtown Journal, he talks about what that means for HCMC right now and what it will mean down the road.
Downtown Journal: What’s your sense of state leaders’ views of HCMC?
Gonzalez: I get the impression that we’re well known and well regarded. They recognize the impact that we provide in the region.
Obviously, the
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More than one way to give birth
By Sarah McKenzie
Hennepin County Medical Center is home to the state’s first Nurse-Midwife Service. Since 1971, midwives at the hospital have been helping women have natural birth experiences. Rita O’Reilly, director of the hospital’s Nurse Midwife Service, said HCMC practices the “true midwifery philosophy.” “We believe in the normal birth process; keeping birth as natural as possible,” she said. “We discourage elective inductions of labor without a medical indication. We encourage families to be participants in the decision making affecting their pregnancy, labor and births.” The hospital’s nurse midwives deliver more than 800 babies each year. The nine-bed unit’s cesarean section rate is 12.7
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