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Bria Schurke grew up in Ely, where her family’s health care provider was not a doctor but a certified nurse practitioner. This is common in rural areas where it’s hard to recruit physicians, and when cash-strapped clinics need to cut costs. And yet, the quality of care and compassion of her CNP inspired Schurke to pursue medicine.
Today, Schurke is a physician associate (PA) at the Essentia Virginia Hospital. She works in the emergency room, where the pressures of rural health care are constant.
“We are the forgotten part of this country,” said Schurke. “What I see in the ER, the spectrum of the lives people live, we are deep in poverty here. You need people who care not just to get a paycheck but to actually make a change in people’s lives on a day-to-day basis. That’s what we do as PAs and CNPs.”
These certified nurse practitioners and physician associates (also known as physician assistants) voted to unionize with the Minnesota Nurses Association a year ago. Essentia declined to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with the MNA pending an appeal to the National Labor Relations Board over the union’s desire to form such a large bargaining unit. They said a strike by such a large union would snarl an entire region’s health care.
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