Alabama Rural Health Association
Rural Health Honoree
Jeri Dunkin, PhD, RN: A Rural Health Professional With Actions Louder Than Words
The route followed by Dr. Jeri Dunkin to get to Alabama included stints in Oregon, Pakistan, Tennessee, Texas, North Dakota, and Georgia. Rural Alabamians are very fortunate that Alabama was her destination. Dr. Dunkin has served on the faculty at the University of Alabama’s Capstone College of Nursing since 1997. She and the other faculty members are directly involved in the struggle to contain the critical shortage of rural nurses. However, her vision and involvement extends well beyond the classroom. Her hard work has greatly enhanced the educational experience for many students while providing quality health care for many rural residents who, otherwise, would have no such care. Her efforts have saved lives.
Dr. Dunkin serves as Chief Executive Officer of the Capstone Rural Health Center in the town of Parrish in rural Walker County, approximately 50 miles from the classrooms in Tuscaloosa. This certified rural health clinic is an enterprise of the Capstone College of Nursing which was established by securing funds through a five-year Health Resources and Services Administration grant. The grant application was written by Dr. Dunkin. The clinic is currently operating in its third year and is facing the stiff financial challenge of generating enough revenue to continue operation when the grant funds run out.
As a major strategy for addressing the acute shortage of physicians willing to practice in rural areas, the staff of this clinic includes two Certified Registered Nurse Practitioners (Kathleen Williams-Thomas and Melissa Key), a Licensed Practical Nurse (Peggy McGraw), and two office staff members (Sherry Jent and Tammy Snow). The clinic staff collaborates with a back-up physician (Susan Silfee, M.D.) who is situated seven miles from the clinic in the town of Oakman. Services offered through the Capstone Rural Health Center consist of primary health care, health promotion, disease prevention, case management, health education, home visits, and community based health programming. The staff of this clinic also serves as back-up for Dr. Silfee, giving her assistance and time off which is one of the most important practice concerns expressed by rural physicians.
This clinic provided valuable hands-on training experience for over 140 graduate and undergraduate nursing students from the University of Alabama during the past two years. Additionally, nutrition students, health care management students, and rural scholars from the University of Alabama; pharmacy students from Auburn University; and nurse practitioner students from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of South Alabama, and Mississippi University for Women have received valuable hands-on training at this clinic.
The community welcomed access to quality health care and has partnered with the center. The building which houses the Capstone Rural Health Center had been vacant for a long period of time and was in serious need of repair. The repair services of local inmates were used and even the Mayor remains on call to immediately provide minor repair services. The town is providing the facilities, water, and sewage free of charge. According to Dr. Sara Barger, Dean of the Capstone College of Nursing, the Capstone Rural Health Center became a reality only through the persistence and endurance of Dr. Dunkin who even called upon the services of her husband to make repairs to the bathroom floor.
This center provides a great rural health success story where everyone has emerged as a winner. A critically underserved rural community now has access to quality health care, health care students in several different disciplines have a clinic where valuable hands-on experience can be obtained and is welcomed by patients, and the collaborating rural physician has assistance in providing health care which also provides her with back up and time off.
However, the greatest story to emerge form this project is the fact that there are local residents alive today who would not be alive if the community was still suffering without health care. There are several success stories like the 32-year-old patient without health insurance who dropped by the clinic to pay his bill and commented that he was not feeling well at the time. After hearing of the symptoms, he was given an EKG and it was immediately realized that he was having a heart attack. The collaborating physician was contacted and secured quality medical attention for him at an area hospital, even though he had no insurance.
The existence of this clinic is a rural health success story which can be duplicated in other places. There is currently a proposal under consideration by the Capstone College of Nursing to establish such a center in the city of Livingston in Sumter County.
Dr. Dunkin received a Bachelor’s in nursing at East Tennessee State University in 1980 and a PhD in nursing at the University of Texas at Austin in 1988. She holds the Martha Lucinda Luker Saxon Chair for Rural Nursing at the Capstone College of Nursing where she focuses her service and research activities in the area of rural health care. Her educational and employment background is rich in activities benefiting rural health such as the six years that she spent in North Dakota as Program Director for the graduate Rural Health Nurse Specialists program in the College of Nursing and as Director of the Nursing Division at the University of North Dakota Rural Health Research Center at the School of Medicine. She is also currently working with an international group to establish an international federation of rural and remote nurses and serves as President of the Rural Nurse Organization.
The Alabama Rural Health Association would like to thank Dr. Jeri Dunkin for her relentless efforts to improve the health status of vulnerable rural residents and for her passion for the profession of rural nursing. She is one of Alabama’s great rural health resources.
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