Idaho is facing a critical shortage of healthcare workers. When that happens, pressure mounts on universities to increase healthcare graduates. But, it’s not as simple as opening the floodgates and allowing more students to enroll.  Faculty availability, limited special equipment, and even physical space present significant challenges.

So what can we do?

One solution is integrating technology into our healthcare education programs. Simulation technology started with pilots in flight schools and expanded into many fields. Within Idaho State University’s College of Health Sciences we’ve adopted a wide array of simulation tools. If that makes you think of Star Trek and robots, you’re not far off.

Beginning this spring and continuing through the next academic year, ISU is introducing future proof, cutting-edge tools to our students including virtual reality, high-fidelity mannequins programmed for various clinical settings, and even 3D holograms.

Thanks to grant funding from the Idaho Workforce Development Council and Portneuf Health Trust, our expanding simulation tools will reach across the state. That means students outside Pocatello receive the benefits of these tools—they can be on our campuses in Meridian, Idaho Falls, Twin Falls, or beyond and receive the best possible education.

These aren’t just new toys. With more than 4,000 students in the College of Health Sciences at ISU, each student can benefit from these tools, allowing us to educate and retain more students. We see it as limitless potential. It doesn’t matter if a student is nursing, dental hygiene, counseling, physician assistant or other specialties, they can use these tools to safely strengthen their skills.

There is an immense amount of stress as a healthcare student. You’re absorbing massive amounts of information, while also feeling anxiety from patient interactions, navigating life-and-death situations, and even inflicting pain on another human being in order to help them. It used to be common for nursing students to practice blood draws on each other, or only read about certain procedures in books until they came across it in a clinical setting. Now our students can learn—and even fail—safely before working with human subjects through simulation.

Before students work with real patients, simulation equipment provides detailed feedback on everything from the patient’s moment-to-moment vital signs, reactions and whether a procedure was successful or not. This allows professors to track student progress and readiness for real-world clinical settings, but also helps build confidence within students to continue on this chosen career path.

Healthcare provider partners like Kootenai Health and St. Luke’s Magic Valley provide the second critical step after students learn fundamentals with simulation tools: applying lessons in real clinical settings. Through partnerships with Idaho hospitals and rural communities, we are doing our part to encourage graduates to remain in state. By graduation, they are embedded within Idaho healthcare institutions, experienced the complexities of onboarding, built staff connections, and established rapport within communities.

To begin resolving the healthcare workforce challenges in our state, we must first acknowledge the problem. Right now, Idaho is the lowest in the nation per capita for both doctors and nurses. But healthcare workforce shortages reach far beyond those two roles.

I’m proud of the creative solutions and tech integration into our healthcare education programs. But it is going to take continued collaboration of Idahoans across the state—along with our lawmakers—to address the critical shortage of healthcare workers now and for years to come. I urge us all to keep our minds open to solutions that may be different from what we’ve tried in the past. Technological advancements, like simulation technology, may just help us find a path forward.