CLIME Conversation Cafe: Early Providers Navigating Transitions into Rural Medicine

Conversation Cafe: Five Miles In and Two Thousand Feet Up: Early Providers Navigating Transitions into Rural Medicine

Thursday, December 3, 2026 | 11:00am-12:00pm (AK), 12:00pm-1:00pm (PT), 1:00pm-2:00pm (MT)

Ashley Dennis, PhD

Join us for a conversation cafe featuring Ashley Dennis, PhD, who will discuss this CLIME-funded research project exploring how recently graduated physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants experience the transition into rural clinical practice. Using longitudinal interviews conducted at two time points over providers’ first three years, the study drew on Jindal-Snape’s Multiple and Multi-dimensional Transitions Theory and Gordon et al.’s Transition-to-Trained-Doctor model to identify what helps early providers build the support systems they need to thrive in rural healthcare settings.

The findings are presented in a striking format: a comic anthology that visualizes composite narratives from the interview data, making the complexity of these transitions accessible to a wider audience, including the very communities that support providers as they settle into rural practice.

Come hear directly from Dr. Dennis about the project, the process of translating interview data into visual storytelling, and what it means for how we support the next generation of rural providers.