Facing demand for healthcare professionals head on, starting with students

Rachel Sankey

Past Staff

September 23, 2024

CLEVELAND – It’s no secret the demand for healthcare professionals in the Northeast Wisconsin region – like many other regions throughout the country – is continuously increasing. 

In fact, according to the 2024 Wisconsin Health Care Workforce Report, every baby boomer will be older than 65 by 2030 – and, with an increasing aging population, comes a growing need for health care.

However, despite a rise in demand, the report showed that between Sept. 30, 2021-22, there was a nearly 5,000-person drop in full-time equivalent healthcare employees in Wisconsin hospitals. 

That’s why, Lakeshore College (Lakeshore) President Paul Carlsen said, the college decided to invest in a $6 million remodel of its training facility – now named Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin Center for Health Care Excellence – which recently opened on campus. 

The newly remodeled center, he said, will allow Lakeshore students studying in a myriad of different healthcare fields to receive the best education to fully prepare them to enter the workforce post-grad. 

The center, Kristy Liphart, vice president of Institutional Advancement at Lakeshore, said, can double its capacity to train 1,500 students annually.

Students in the following programs will receive training in the building:

• Nursing-associate’s degree
• Practical Nursing
• Medical Assistant
• Nursing Assistant
• Emergency Medical Technician
• Medical Coding
• Radiography
• Ophthalmic Assistant

Without donations from Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity (FSCC) Sponsored Ministries who together donated $1 million; the West Foundation (who donated $500,000); and the Frank G. and Frieda K. Brotz Family Foundation (who also donated $500,000), Liphart said the newly remodeled building wouldn’t be here today. 

“This is a project that we started long ago, and it’s so lovely to see it go from vision to fruition,” she said at the center’s groundbreaking earlier this month. “The new health skills training facility is named after our wonderful partners, Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin, but the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity were solid partners in this whole thing, and they partnered with Froedtert to make this happen.”

Scott McConnaha, president and CEO of the FSCC, said in the healthcare industry, “one of the things that continues to keep us up at night is a shortage of good quality, well-trained, dedicated staff” – which is why he said the center is so crucial.

“Providing excellent health care is difficult if we don’t have enough people doing it in our facilities,” he said at the groundbreaking. “Carlsen, Lakeshore trustees, faculty, staff… and all our fellow donors – please know how grateful we are for your commitment to the healthcare ministry.” 

Additionally, Carlsen said the Lakeshore Community Foundation raised more than $3 million to help fund the center.

“We’ve been a college for more than 100 years, and that $3 million-plus investment in this college is our community’s largest effort,” he said. “I’d like our community to know just how humbled and honored all of us are at this college to work for an institution our community deems worthy of investing.”

Now, Carlsen said, it’s Lakeshore’s turn to get to work.

“To our community, we say ‘thank you,’” he said. “You’ve done your part… and now we will do our part. We will teach and graduate healthcare professionals who will provide us and our loved ones with care and compassion for generations.”

A look inside the center

The Center for Health Care Excellence, Liphart said, encompasses more than 26,000 square feet of updated learning labs and multidisciplinary simulation labs, including life-like patient simulators students can work on.

One simulation room, Associate Dean of Nursing Norman Shanks said, has a birthing mannequin that talks, blinks and has a heartbeat. 

Students, he said, can palpate the mannequin’s belly and feel her baby. 

“That’s very exciting for our OB clinical because you can’t force or predict birth, so a lot of times you end up in a simulation,” Amber Madden, a nursing student at Lakeshore, said. “So, now it’s exciting because you get to experience that (with a life-like patient).”

Shanks said the center can run four simulations at once – the birthing mannequin, a newborn baby, an adolescent and an adult. 

“So, we can take all phases of life – from birth to death – and train on them, and we can do it all at the same time,” he said. 

Above each of the rooms, Shanks said instructors can observe students and provide feedback through a microphone. 

In another room in the center, students can practice inserting an IV into a realistic model arm. 

In addition, the building also has a few conference rooms.

The outside front of the building, Liphart said, also serves as the ambulance bay for Lakeshore’s public safety students.

“They can come in and simulate the full emergency, from out on the driving skills course – (where) an accident or something happens – to the emergency room, where our emergency radiography students will take over,” she said. 

Dr. Imran Andrabi, president and CEO of Froedtert ThedaCare, said it’s important to understand the Center for Health Care Excellence is the place to make mistakes.

“We don’t learn when we are successful; we learn when we make mistakes,” he said. “So, do all the simulations, work with each other, make all the mistakes – so that when you’re actually with a patient, you remember.”

When it comes to working with “our patients, our communities and our families,” Andrabi said “we never want a bad event to happen.”

“That is why the Center for (Health Care) Excellence becomes so critical,” he said. “And this is why the disciplinary training between EMS, and nursing, and techs and others is so critical as well.”

The training building, Shanks said, will now easily be able to accommodate more than double the number of nursing students – which he said is at 300 right now.

“We have no cap on our classes,” he said. “We want to graduate as many nurses as we can.”

Supporting the students, region

Madden, who is in her third semester at Lakeshore, said she is most excited to gain new experience she may not have been able to have before.

“I don’t think it’s really common that people get experience to work with EMS and to work with X-ray in school,” she said. “I feel like that is one of those things that’s a new experience when you go into a hospital, so I think it’s going to be nice to have that background and feel comfortable talking to new people.”

The more practice students have, Madden said, the more prepared they will be to jump into the workforce – herself included. 

“I think that, with the VA here, and the new (ClearSky Health rehabilitation) hospital, they’re going to be looking for workers, and hopefully we’ll be ready to pump some out to them,” she said. 

The newly remodeled center, Madden said, also proves that a student doesn’t have to go to a big city to receive a quality healthcare education. 

“You can live in Manitowoc, Two Rivers, Mishicot,” she said. “You can live in these rural communities and still come and get this big education in such a small college. (It) sounds a little contradictory, but you can. It’s a big education with a lot of opportunities in a very small community.”

Six months after graduation, Shanks said students will receive a survey. 

Out of those that answer the survey, he said 87% of graduates are still working in nursing.

“It was in the high 80s that (those nursing graduates) are still working in our community – between Manitowoc and Sheboygan Counties,” he said. “We love that they’re all living right here.”

To learn more, visit goltc.edu/health-care-excellence.