The health system is training the next generation of doctors, nurses and clinical staff — and keeping them practicing in the communities that need them.
Physician shortages have been widening across the state for a decade. Nursing pipelines are strained. Rural communities feel it first and worst.
“A family medicine doctor retires in a small town, and the search to replace them can stretch two or three years. Some searches never end,” said Dr. Ray Dusman, president of Physician and Clinical Enterprise at Parkview Health. “Care quietly disappears.”
The United States faces a growing physician shortage, with the Association of American Medical Colleges projecting a national shortfall of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036. Nearly 74 million Americans already live in federally designated primary care shortage areas, and rural communities are among the hardest hit. Physician shortages are especially acute in primary care and community-based specialties that form the backbone of local healthcare access.
Parkview Health's response has been to build. In 2022, the health system launched a formalized Graduate Medical Education program. Four years later, it has become one of the largest and fastest-growing physician training operations in Indiana — seven ACGME-accredited residency tracks, 122 resident physicians inducted since launch, and a clear path to more than 150 new physicians in the region by 2030.
Most physicians who complete their residency training in a specific area choose to stay and practice in that exact community. Train doctors here, and they build careers here. Their kids go to school here. They become the family medicine doctor a small town spends years trying to recruit — except the recruiting already happened.
Every resident at Parkview, whether they attended medical school in Indiana, elsewhere in America, or abroad, must meet the same U.S. standards for physician training and licensure before they can practice independently. These physicians help ensure patients can access care close to home. Parkview's focus is simple: train excellent doctors, maintain rigorous standards, and strengthen healthcare access across the region.
Training across seven specialties
Parkview GME residents train across seven specialties: family medicine, internal medicine, general surgery, psychiatry, OB/GYN, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and a transitional year. Every program is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Residents rotate through 14 Parkview facilities across northeast Indiana, which means their training happens in Fort Wayne, but also in Huntington, Auburn, Warsaw, and every other community in the Parkview system.
In June 2025, Parkview celebrated a milestone worth naming: the first class of internal medicine residents graduated. It marked the fulfillment of a plan set in motion years earlier.
“Every physician who completes their training with us becomes part of the fabric of care in this region,” Dr. Dusman said. “When we invest in training a resident today, we're investing in the doctor who will deliver a baby in Wabash in 2035, or the surgeon who will save a life in Auburn in 2040. That's the timeline we're operating on.”
Two new residency tracks — family medicine and psychiatry — welcomed their first classes in 2026. Both address urgent regional needs. Family medicine physicians are the backbone of rural primary care. Psychiatrists are among the scarcest specialists in Indiana, a state that ranks 43rd in the nation for mental health provider access.
5,000 students a year
The residency program is the anchor, but the training footprint is far larger. Parkview hosts more than 5,000 students annually across its facilities for hands-on clinical learning — nursing students, imaging technicians, pharmacy students, physician assistants, and allied health professionals. The health system partners with 58 local high schools for work-based learning experiences that introduce students to healthcare careers before they choose a college. It works with 129 higher education institutions across the region on clinical placements.
Parkview also assigns more than 10 of its own clinicians every year to serve as clinical instructors at local colleges and universities. Nursing schools nationally cite faculty shortages as the binding constraint on enrollment, not student demand. Parkview pays the salaries and releases the time. The colleges get the instruction capacity they can't otherwise afford. The region gets more nurses.
Workforce is infrastructure
Access to care isn't only a story about hospitals and clinics. It's a story about the people who work in them. A hospital with modern equipment and no primary care physician within an hour's drive isn't accessible in any meaningful sense.
Parkview's approach treats workforce as infrastructure. Every resident trained in the program is a bet on the region. Every high school student who gets a first look at healthcare in a Parkview facility is a bet on the next generation of nurses and technicians. Every clinician placed in a college classroom is a bet on the students who will graduate five years later.
“Rural and community healthcare in this country is losing a race against retirements and burnout,” Dr. Dusman said. “The only way to win that race is to run it — to train more doctors, more nurses, more clinicians, in the places we need them most.”
By 2030, Parkview expects to have added 150 new physicians to the region through its GME program alone. Combined with the 5,000-student annual training footprint and the ongoing investment in nursing faculty, the effect compounds year over year.
