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A small town Idaho doctor spends his days caring for friends and neighbors in need. He’s also training the next generation of students who might end up replacing him. That’s important, because the number of rural family practice doctors is dwindling. NWPB’s Rachel Sun reports. :17

In the next few years, doctor Matt Told will get to watch babies he delivered graduate high school. He’s been there for the beginning, and the end, of many lives in his hometown.

1TOLD: “ I've had a lot of friends here that — I've watched them live their life. And they've now passed on. It's been special to be a part of that transition.”

Told is an attending physician at Syringa Hospital and Clinics in Grangeville, Idaho. The prairie town is home to roughly three-thousand people. Told shows me around the hospital…

2TOLD “ This is our lab, and // back behind here is our O-R // we have two O-Rs…”

…which takes all of five minutes.

The number of doctors like Told is diminishing. A 20-25 study found an 11 percent year-over-year nationwide decrease in the rural family physician workforce. 

In towns like Grangeville, physicians like Told play a crucial role for some patients.

3TOLD “They won't take the time to travel the 75 miles it takes to get down to a specialist, so you have to do a lot of research and just looking back and things and stuff that you learned in medical school.”

But he won’t be around forever. So, what’s a small-town doc to do? If you’re Told, you teach the next generation.

Told works with a new student just about every month in a partnership with Rocky Vista University. He says he tries to make sure students get plenty of chances to learn practical skills like…

4TOLD: “Some medical students, they don't … even know how to fill the syringe, right?”

But there’s also the human side. Things like knowing what it’s like to hold a new baby and place it on its mother’s chest, or how to help someone through a vaccination or blood draw.

5TOLD: “It's teaching them how to basically function with all of the knowledge that they have. To put it into application and not come off looking silly.”

Bri Vanderheyden (VAN-der-HYD-en), a former student, says about 45 minutes after arriving in Grangeville, she got a text from her new mentor:

6VANDERHEYDEN: “He essentially said, ‘Hey, I have a patient who's nine centimeters dilated right now. Do you want to come and deliver the baby?’ … I think it really just speaks to him and his investment in teaching, but also the kind of trust that he has with his patients.”

Students learn how to suture lacerations, put in chest tubes, drive colonoscopy scopes, and treat trauma patients. Told’s dedication to rural healthcare and teaching the next generation might be traced back to his own early experiences:

Told’s father is also a doctor. He says his Dad never turned away a patient. Not even when they showed up at the family’s doorstep.

8TOLD: “They could barely stand up, and he would put them on a hay bale, and we'd adjust their back and neck. And they'd feel better. And after some time talking they’d shake hands and they’d be on their way.”

Vanderheyden, who is now a resident physician at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, pursued a track in urban underserved healthcare. She says at first… she was skeptical of what she could learn in rural Idaho. The answer, she says, was a lot:

8VANDERHEYDEN: “I have several patients in my own clinic that, for their own reasons, have hesitancies around kind of standard recommendations for primary care… It's something that I saw him kindly and compassionately address with people. And that is something I definitely have taken with me.”

Told was recently honored for his teaching role by the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians as a Master Preceptor for his dedication to training and mentoring medical students.

Reporting in Grangeville, Idaho, I’m Rachel Sun.