Mayo Clinic Helps Attracts Residents to Rochester, MN
Mayo Clinic is a great place to work, and Rochester an idyllic place to live.
Thousands of the best and brightest young people move to Rochester every year to receive medical training or study at the city’s colleges and universities. In the past, a large percentage of them moved elsewhere after completing their education. Not so anymore.
“Students used to come for training and then went other places. Now they are considering Rochester as a home,” says Ruth Bello, operations manager for the Mayo School of Health Sciences, who herself relocated to Rochester from Bloomington. Bello understands as well as anyone what makes her adopted hometown so attractive.
“It’s very clean and family-focused,” she says, noting that Rochester also affords residents a healthy array of both indoor and outdoor leisure opportunities. “There isn’t anything I am missing that I had in the Twin Cities.”
Working at Mayo
Of course, it helps that Bello loves her job, which explains why she was willing to commute an hour and a half each way before making the move to Rochester in January 2013.
“I work with some of the smartest people I have ever known and [new] things are happening here every day,” Bello says.
What she appreciates most about Rochester is the professional environment, which has been shaped by the Mayo Clinic and the city’s health-care-centric economy.
“Instead of people being out for themselves and focused on climbing the corporate ladder, here we are working toward the same goal: What is best for the patients and family members who come to Rochester from around the world to receive medical treatment,” she says.
Jinette Lais, a nurse in the medical/surgical/transplant ICU at Mayo Clinic, decided to apply for a job at Mayo largely because of her father’s experience as a patient.
“My dad had been receiving care for blood cancer and I was very impressed about how he was treated,” Lais says. “Also, my sister was working there as an ICU nurse and had nothing but good things to say.”
“Lucky” to Call Rochester Home
It has been three years since Lais moved to Rochester from Sioux Falls with her husband Ryan in tow. The 20-something couple intends to stay for the long term, as Ryan recently completed the philanthropy and development program at St. Mary’s University and works full-time as a workforce/advocacy events coordinator at the Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce.
Like Bello, Lais believes that the Mayo Clinic’s laser-like focus on serving its constituency – patients and family members – makes the institution, and in turn, Rochester, an exceptional place to pursue a career.
“My primary role is as a bedside nurse, taking care of patients on ventilator support,” she says. “What the outside world doesn’t see is that [the doctors, nurses and administrators at Mayo] provide just as much care to the patient’s family as to the patient.”
Lais agrees that Rochester is a decidedly family-friendly town, with the same cultural and recreational opportunities provided by larger cities, but without the “hustle and bustle.”
Thinking of the high quality of life and excellent employment opportunities, she considers herself “lucky” to call Rochester home.
“I can’t imagine a better place to live and work,” she says.