Effectiveness of educational strategies preparing physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and certified nurse-midwives for underserved areas.

A study of physician assistant, nurse practitioner, and certified nurse midwifery programs was undertaken to identify and assess the effectiveness of recruitment, educational, and deployment strategies that programs use to prepare practitioners for medically underserved areas. The 51 programs studied were those having mission statements or known track records relating to this goal. A total of 170 interviews were conducted with faculty, students, graduates, and employers from 9 programs visited on-site and 42 programs surveyed by telephone. All programs had some recruitment and training activities in underserved sites. Only about half of the programs were able to submit data on their graduates' practice settings and specialties. These data suggest that older students who have backgrounds in underserved areas and clearly identified practice goals are more likely to practice in underserved areas. Programs that actively promote service to the underserved do so through publicly stated missions and recruitment and educational strategies that complement these missions. Such programs also are more likely to evaluate and document their success than programs that lack strategies.