Andrea Gutierrez, a student in our Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program here at Rocky Mountain University of Health Profession (RMUoHP), grew up in a Spanish-speaking Latinx community in El Paso, where the cultural diversity and her own experiences motivated her to become a physical therapist (PT).
Aside from earning a master’s degree in kinesiology, Gutierrez worked as a full-time PT aide at a skilled nursing facility in El Paso in preparation for PT school. It was there that she gained a passion for meeting and helping people. “I had many opportunities at the skilled nursing facility to engage with the geriatric community who occupied one of the original neighborhoods of El Paso where my great grandmother, born in Chihuahua, had worked as a seamstress for most of her adult life. I have [so] much passion for the people who I met, imagining that some of them could have met my great grandmother or had common day-to-day experiences. They motivated me to seek a profession in healthcare to serve them at a capacity that would allow me to make a further impact on their lives,” said Gutierrez.
Her education in the DPT program is preparing her to give back to the community through her clinical experiences. Gutierrez said, “While I was in the weeds of didactic learning through lecture, lab, and now online learning, I did not realize just how much it was all going to be applied to the clinical setting. Since starting the first round of clinical [rotations] this semester, I have seen that we were given many tools to assist with our success in the clinic.”
Aside from her PT and clinical educational experiences, Gutierrez said that one of her favorite experiences at RMUoHP had been working with class leadership to develop discussion groups that focus on topics of health disparities. “Topics of health disparities ranged from daily implicit biases to disproportionate deaths from COVID-19 associated with race and socioeconomic status,” she said.
Through these discussions and student interest, she hopes to establish a platform for further discussion as well as access resources about diversity for students as future healthcare professionals. “It has been an ongoing project that has since spread to other cohorts within the DPT and PA programs,” said Gutierrez. “We hope to keep the conversation going and hopefully integrate them within campus student activity as we transition back to onsite learning.”
For Gutierrez, these conversations are important. “Diversity among healthcare providers ensures that quality of care is accessible to a diverse population. Patients seek familiarity and representation among their healthcare providers, giving them greater ease for which they can be better understood. Especially among populations who have collectively experienced discrimination based on race, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, gender, and religion–the demand for representation and learned intolerance for inequality has influenced people’s healthcare decisions to the point that people of diverse populations may not seek care at all,” said Gutierrez.
“As the patient and their preferences are at the center of our practice, we owe it to them, especially among them who have endured discrimination, to give them the option to seek representation among healthcare providers,” said Gutierrez. “Diversity among healthcare providers can meet these demands because it brings genuine empathy at the heart of the healthcare experience.”
She added, “I recognize the impact that my Hispanic heritage, as well as the place that harnesses it, has had on my choice to become a healthcare professional. I look forward to the communities, both familiar and new, that I will have the pleasure of serving.”
For more information on the work of the Student Diversity Committee or to join the discussion on health disparities, contact studentaffairs@rm.edu.
