♪♪ Dr. Christina Lasich: In rural medicine, I always say that the day is like a box of chocolates.

You never know what you're going to get.

And, um, we can be seeing people that have very complex issues, uh, because we have a large retirement community up here.

We have a lot of elderly up here.

And we see people that are living in very rural areas of our county with very little resources, including, um, maybe even no, running water or electricity, maybe even no internet, um, and living an hour from the hospital.

So rural settings, you're, you really need to be able to handle whatever walks in the door.

(Knocking) Dr. Lasich: Hi Mrs. Smith.

Mrs. Smith: Hello.

Narrator: Dr. Christina Lasich is the Chief Medical Officer of Western Sierra Medical Clinic in Grass Valley.

The clinic serves people living in Nevada, Placer and Sierra Counties.

Clinics like this one, in rural areas all over California, are facing a serious shortage of healthcare professionals.

Dr. Christina Lasich: It's really difficult to recruit uh healthcare professionals into rural areas, uh, for several different reasons.

Uh, one is housing.

Housing is very, um, in short supply in the rural areas.

Not everybody's built for being in a rural area and they, and they like the hustle and bustle of a city.

They like to be next in the nearest mall.

They like to be, uh, near, uh, lots of restaurants.

Uh, and so, rural communities are not for everybody.

Claudia: I'’m going to go ahead and do an exam, okay?

Narrator: Claudia Canturin had never heard of Grass Valley before coming to work here as a resident in the UC Davis nurse practitioner program.

Claudia: It ended up being a new experience to do rural healthcare, and it ended up being just an amazing learning opportunity because of the fact that there's just such a, there's a such a lack of access to care.

When you're working in a, perhaps in a, in a bigger city, you have those specialties a little bit more readily available for you, whereas here we may not have that.

Claudia: I'’m going to go ahead and push down, do you feel any pain?

Narrator: Claudia'’s residency is soon coming to an end, but she plans to stay and continue working in Grass Valley.

It'’s the best outcome for both the clinic, and UC Davis.

The university has multiple initiatives aimed at getting more doctors and nurses to practice in underserved areas in the Central Valley, and in Northern California all the way to the Oregon border.

Dr. Deb Bakerjian: This idea of supporting this Northern area for us, it made sense because we're the Northern-most academic health center in the state.

There is nobody else that's really doing this work, uh, besides us.

Narrator: One way UC Davis introduces students to these areas is with a bus tour through hundreds of miles of California'’s Central Valley.

Dr. Deb Bakerjian: The bus trip was an opportunity for students, not just nursing students, but we've had, um, other students and faculty as well, um, go down, uh, stop several places in the Central Valley, um, meet with the people who live there, whether it's healthcare providers, community groups, talk with them, uh, and learn about what their issues are and what their strengths are.

They have tremendous strengths.

In fact, we learn from our partners all the time.

But the students, often just describe it as a life -changing event.

And so this gives them the opportunity to get in there and see what's real.

Narrator: Seeing "“what'’s real"”.... also happens on the ground, through UC Davis training programs specifically aimed at creating the next generation of rural providers.

Dr. Tommy Saborido is one of them.

Seen here during his residency, prior to Covid, he stayed on as a doctor in rural Northeastern California, about two hours from Redding.

Dr. Tommy Saborido: I drive by more cows on the way from my house to the hospital than people in cars.

The reason I came here is because the scenery and the reason I'm staying is because of the people.

I'll go into a grocery store and it'll take me 30 minutes to get a carton of milk because people want to talk about their health issues.

Since being here for the last year, I've delivered a baby in the emergency room.

I've taken care of heart attacks, strokes, multiple mass-casualty trauma incidents.

Everything from traumas, to heart attacks and everything in between.

Narrator: Dr. Saborido says the pace keeps him on his toes and always learning.

He says that can be difficult and stressful.

But the rural setting also allows him to form deeper relationships with his patients even if that means working on a day off, or making house calls.

Dr. Tommy Saborido: Nothing beats making a house call when it comes to figuring out why some of these patients miss appointments frequently, or are keep coming back to the ER for falls, when you can go to their house and see many fall, fall hazards.

I think they just feel like they were heard and listened to.

And a lot of these older folks, that's the kind of doctor they had when they were younger.

Dr. Deb Bakerjian: You get to be a big fish in the pond because if you're one of a handful of providers, everybody in the community knows you, you build incredible relationships that, um, where you're taking care of patients for a lifetime.

And that's a real privilege.

♪♪ Annc: This Digital Short is supported by UC Davis Health home to the number one ranked medical center in Sacramento by US News & World Report.

Learn more about their doctors and their passion for advancing health at health.ucdavis.edu.