Family medicine students making a world of difference | |
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Thanks to the statewide Family Medicine Scholars Consortium run by the Department of Family Medicine in the IU School of Medicine (IUSM), students are learning just how nice it is to be needed.
Students, staff and faculty from IUSM are an integral part of the statewide Family Medicine Scholars Consortium, a program which uses a summer “shadowing” program to interest medical students in working in medically under-served parts of Indiana. In the program, the students spend eight weeks shadowing family doctors, many of them in Indiana counties which face ongoing problems with access to health care. They learn how to work with patients in small-town settings, where doctors are as much friend and adviser as medical professional. And students learn first-hand the vital role doctors play in helping people navigate today’s complex heath-care system. The program is led by Dr. Richard Kiovsky, a 1976 IUSM graduate and a member of the school’s family medicine program. “I love the traditional model of the doctor as a trusted friend, someone who is an important part of the life of a community,” said Kiovs ky. But the model is increasingly difficult to sustain. More than two-thirds of Indiana’s 92 counties have shortages of medical care of one kind or another, many of them in rural and inner-city areas. To meet the challenge, IUSM made family practice a require d clerkship in 1991; the number of students per graduating class choosing family practice more than doubled from 10 to 20 percent. Too many areas of Indiana, however, still didn’t attract the doctors they needed. So, in 1994 the school and the Cinergy Foundation created a rural medicine program to expose students to the joys of small-town practice. When other programs with similar go als turned up, organizers joined forces to form the Family Medicine Scholars Consortium. Not only Hoosier citizens have a vested interest in attracting doctors to rural and inner-city settings. For the state itself, availability of good medical care is a key to the future. “When the state asks a corporation or a company to move to Indiana, the first things they ask about are the schools and health care,” said Kiovsky. “And with so many companies seeking to move into less congested areas, where health care isn’t always readi ly available, it becomes an economic development issue for the state.” The key to the Family Medicine Scholars program is offering options to medical students when they leave the IUPUI campus to begin their careers. Kiovsky hopes the experiences the students enjoy during the eight-week program will encourage some of them to choose “the road less traveled” and become family practice doctors. What he has seen in the relatively short history of the program convinces him the consortium is on the right track. “To see the transformation in these kids is incredible, exciting,” he said. “The feel the tug on their hearts, and if 18 some of them answer that call, it can make a world of difference to people who need their help.” | |
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Publication date: September 29, 2000
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