RESUMO
The University of New Mexico School of Medicine (UNMSOM) sought to train medical students in public health concepts, knowledge, and skills as a means of improving the health of communities statewide. Faculty members from every UNMSOM department collaborated to create and integrate a public health focus into all years of the medical school curriculum. They identified key competencies and developed new courses that would synchronize students' learning public health subjects with the mainstream medical school content. New courses include: Health Equity: Principles of Public Health; Epidemiology and Biostatistics; Evidence-Based Practice; Community-Based Service Learning; and Ethics in Public Health. Students experiencing the new courses, first in pilot and then final forms, gave high quantitative ratings to all courses. Some students' qualitative comments suggest that the Public Health Certificate has had a profound transformative effect. Instituting the integrated Public Health Certificate at UNMSOM places it among the first medical schools to require all its medical students to complete medical school with public health training. The new UNMSOM Public Health Certificate courses reunite medicine and public health in a unified curriculum.
Assuntos
Certificação , Educação Médica/organização & administração , Saúde Pública/educação , Competência Clínica , Comportamento Cooperativo , Currículo , Docentes de Medicina/organização & administração , Conhecimentos, Atitudes e Prática em Saúde , Humanos , New Mexico , Faculdades de Medicina , Estudantes de MedicinaRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Substantial numbers of people are medically underserved because of rural residence and/or economic circumstances. The mission of many medical schools is service to this group, so the ability to identify applicants likely to serve this population is valuable. METHOD: In 2009, the authors asked graduates from their medical school, class of 1997 and forward, if they practiced in a medically underserved community in the past year. Variables obtained from medical school applications and scores from a survey of attitudes toward the underserved measured at matriculation were analyzed using logistic regression. RESULTS: Of 244 practitioners, 35% reported working in an underserved community. Rural background, older age (25+) at matriculation, and being a member of an underrepresented minority were independent, statistically significant predictors of practice in an underserved community. CONCLUSIONS: Schools wanting to increase the number of practitioners caring for the underserved could consider older as well as rural and minority applicants.
Assuntos
Área Carente de Assistência Médica , Médicos de Família/provisão & distribuição , Padrões de Prática Médica/estatística & dados numéricos , Área de Atuação Profissional/estatística & dados numéricos , Faculdades de Medicina , Adulto , Fatores Etários , Escolha da Profissão , Medicina Comunitária , Feminino , Seguimentos , Humanos , Modelos Logísticos , Masculino , Grupos Minoritários/estatística & dados numéricos , New Mexico , Médicos de Família/estatística & dados numéricos , Serviços de Saúde Rural , População Rural , Recursos HumanosRESUMO
The University of New Mexico School of Medicine and College of Arts and Sciences developed its combined BA/MD degree program, which will increase the medical school class from 75 students to 100 in the fall of 2010, to address the critical issue of physician shortages in underserved New Mexico. The program, which began operation at the undergraduate (i.e., college) level in 2006, expands opportunities in medical education for New Mexico students, especially those from rural and underserved minority communities, and prepares them to practice in underserved areas of New Mexico. In the BA/MD program, students will earn a bachelor of arts, a medical degree, and a proposed certificate in public health. A challenging liberal arts curriculum introduces the principles of public health. Students have unique rural medicine and public health preceptorship opportunities that begin in the undergraduate years and continue throughout medical school. Students work with a community physician mentor in summer service-learning projects during the undergraduate years, then they return for required rural medicine rotations in the first, third, and fourth years of medical school. Simultaneously, the classroom curriculum for these rural medicine experiences emphasizes the public health perspective. High priority has been placed on supporting students with academic advising and counseling, tutoring, supplemental instruction, on-campus housing, and scholarships. The program has received strong support from communities, the New Mexico state legislature, the New Mexico Medical Society, and the faculties of arts and sciences and the school of medicine. Early results on the undergraduate level demonstrate strong interest from applicants, retention of participants, and enthusiasm of students and faculty alike.