Driving into downtown Gaylord, Mich., one might think they’ve been transported into a small Swiss town. The “Alpine Village,” as it’s known, is home to a downtown dotted with chalet-style buildings peddling everything from chocolate to jewelry.
A quick trip up the road and one will find a public park with a resident herd of elk happily munching on hay or napping in the meadow. With fanciful foliage in the fall, snowy ski resorts in the winter and a temperate climate during the spring and summer, it’s no surprise why the town is so popular among outdoor enthusiasts.
That might be great for tourists, but for the year-round residents, there’s more to life than enjoying nature or having easy access to shopping. For example, health care can often be a struggle in this community of 4,600.
“There is a huge gap in care in the whole northern Michigan area,” said Ashlyn Muntin, a current student in the Family Nurse Practitioner Program who calls Gaylord home. “We have quality providers, but we don't have a lot of them. It's hard for people to get to their appointments. It's hard for people to get their medications, to get the therapies they need, like physical occupational therapy, wound care, things like that.”
Muntin, originally from Texas, met her husband while living in Key West, Fla. The two got married and decided to move their growing family back to his hometown in northern Michigan.
“What I really love about Northern Michigan is that there's something to do all year, except ‘mud season,’ which is what I call early spring when everything's melting,” Muntin said, adding she is an avid skier.
Muntin loves her community and wants to give back. One way in which she does so is through educating patients.
“The most important thing that I can provide as a provider here in northern Michigan is education,” she said. “I'll have adult patients who don't know what protein is. And it's just because they have never been educated on it.”
Currently, she is splitting her time between clinical rotations in different northern Michigan cities. During the time of this interview, she was in a pediatric unit at Alcona Health Center in Cheboygan, about a 45-minute drive northeast of Gaylord. But she has also done rotations in Elk Rapids — near Traverse City — and Gaylord.
Muntin is busy balancing being a mother and wife, as well as a student and critical care nurse. She chose the Michigan State University College of Nursing over others partly because her husband is a proud MSU alumnus, but also because of the program’s reputation.
“I had never really known someone with such diehard school pride,” Muntin said of her husband. “It was kind of infectious and I thought, ‘that's something I want to be part of.’ And then the more that I learned about the college, the more my respect grew for the college, and the more that I wanted to be part of it.
“Whenever you're coming into a (clinical) office as a student and you're a Michigan State student, people respect that school. They know what you have to do to be part of it.”
Muntin appreciates the variety in clinical experiences students receive, all of which are arranged by the program. Those varied experiences have helped guide her conversations with patients in all settings in her mission to reduce health gaps.
“So, I think it’s, like, finding out for people where those gaps lie,” she said. “Why, you know, they're not meeting their nutritional goals for themselves or their children or whatever, or why they aren't able to pick up their medications. What can we do? Do they do they need someone to come to their house? Do they need transportation?
“This is quite a bit of a health desert out here.”
