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From classroom to clinic, externship brings study to life
Chelsea Edwards, MS-II at OSU College of Osteopathic Medicine, arrived for her summer rural externship Miami, Okla., on the heels of a powerful tornado that swept through nearby Picher.
She came to town to spend three weeks shadowing family physician Michael Durham, D.O. and other health care professionals. Edwards was among a select group of OSU medical students shadowing rural physicians and health care professionals through the OSU Oklahoma Area Health Education Center’s Summer Rural Externship Program. The growing program drew 15 rising second-year students.
“I had no idea what a family doctor did in a rural community. They do a lot more than I imagined, from well-woman checks to small excisions, well-baby checkups and biopsies,” Edwards said. The externship helped her translate textbook training to real life. She helped with clinic check-ins on her first day. “The pace was frenzied and some patients were dust-covered from cleaning up their homes,” she said.
She heard patients’ stories of loss and survival as they visited the clinic for care. Her medical studies came to life in patient cases. “I was able to relate first-year basic sciences to a clinical setting,” she said. Patients often had hypertension, diabetes and allergies. “I had learned about these, but it was helpful to relate what I learned to real situations. The more times I heard or saw something, the more it stayed with me.”
Pharmacology and pathology were part of each day and Edwards expects that will help her in her second year of medical school. She also shadowed a physical therapist and emergency medical technicians. In addition, she volunteered at a free clinic weekly. Edwards saw both the clinical and business aspects of medicine, and grew from thinking academically to thinking clinically, she said. She saw how electronic medical records work as Dr. Durham entered information, looked at lab results, imaging results and other data on a laptop. Prescriptions were sent straight from a chart to a pharmacy. Necessary papers then were scanned into a computer by office staff.
She says she loved being at work each day, in part because of the clinic staff. “I learned it doesn’t just take a doctor to run an office. Each staff person brought something different, like dealing well with patients, running a front desk, or a nurse checking blood pressures. By the time a patient sees the doctor, they are feeling cared for.” In her externship summary paper, Edwards praised Dr. Durham and the doctors from the free clinic as wonderful role models who made her proud to be a future physician.
Edwards has lived abroad and is well-traveled. Still, she likes rural Oklahoma. Her externship paper sums it up. She writes: I have spent some of the best times of my life in rural communities. I can picture myself living and being a physician in one.
Grant expands rural medical training opportunities
A three-year, $542,958 Pre-Doctoral Training in Primary Care grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration will aid OSU Center for Rural Health efforts to increase the number of physicians choosing to practice in rural Oklahoma.
“We want to create programs that will provide rural health care providers as rapidly as possible by creating new residency training sites, and increase the pipeline for future rural physicians through educational programs that begin as early as middle school,” says William Pettit, D.O., OSU associate dean for rural health. “This is just one grant initiative to support our mission to serve rural and under-served Oklahoma, while promoting both primary care medicine and allied health care careers in Oklahoma.”
Jeff Hackler, the center’s director of grants and resource development, says expanding and enhancing rural medical training will make it easier for students from rural areas to remain in rural Oklahoma for much of their training. Instead of displacing students for seven years of medical training in mostly urban settings, the Center will help these students train more often in the rural areas where they plan to return to practice.
The grant provides earlier and expanded introduction and reinforcement of primary care and rural practice, with enhanced rural clerkship experiences for all primary care departments. These activities are combined with enhanced student tracking, course evaluation, and rural, primary care research activities. The center is developing courses to introduce rural medicine and rural health for students in their first two years of medical school. Rising second-year students can shadow a rural physician in a three-week summer rural medical clerkship, introducing them to rural medicine early in their medical training.
Third- and fourth-year students will continue to take clerkships in rural health as part of community clinic, rural clinic, community hospital and emergency medicine rotations. In addition, the center will help coordinate rural rotations for other primary care electives as requested.
Learning communities will be developed in rural Oklahoma so an interested medical student can remain in a particular region of the state for much of his or her clerkships. The training regions will revolve around existing rural residency programs or developing sites in Durant, Enid, Lawton, and Tahlequah. “The Center will develop ‘community campuses’ that will support students during their training, and help them develop relationships with regional health professionals that will continue into their careers as practicing rural physicians,” Hackler says.
New employees join CME staff
OSU College of Osteopathic Medicine Office of Continuing Medical Education welcomes new employees Rob Robinson (left), program coordinator and Cyndi Canning (right), program specialist.
Robinson is a U.S. Air Force veteran and an earned a degree in journalism at OSU-Stillwater. He joined OSU CME in December 2007. He has been a teacher in the Tulsa school system and taught English in China. He also worked for OSU-Tulsa.
Canning joined OSU in May. She is a U.S. Navy veteran and served as a hospital corpsman, receiving the Navy Medal of Commendation for outstanding performance of duties while stationed at Great Lakes Naval Medical Center. She is currently working on her degree in psychology and has experience in adult continuing education and private, non-profit operations.
Robinson and Canning welcome the opportunity to help all osteopathic physicians and related professionals with CME needs. Contact Robinson at (918) 586-4617 or Canning at (918) 586-4615 for any questions about the CME programs.
Roche gives supplies for OSU patients
OSU Physicians clinic system has teamed with Roche Diagnostics to help OSU clinic system patients who have diabetes manage their disease. Roche is providing ACCU-CHEK® Aviva meters and a start-up supply of Aviva test strips to test blood glucose for OSU clinics’ newly-diagnosed patients.
The materials should make controlling diabetes more manageable for OSU clinic patients with diabetes, says Judy Wickham, R.N., OSU continuous quality improvement case manager. ”As health care providers, we believe that patients are more comfortable and compliant with testing their blood glucose if they are given the resources to test immediately after being diagnosed with diabetes,” she says.
She added that the OSU clinics are working together to make this program a success and the materials offered should help improve outcomes for OSU clinic patients with diabetes. The ACCU-CHEK® Aviva meters and test strips are available in the OSU clinic’s family medicine, obstetrics and internal medicine sites.
Round of Applause
Presentations
Telemedicine demonstration with Congressman Boren, Drs. Lee, Martens and Pinkerton, Durant, OK, William J. Pettit, D.O.
Presentation: “Training the Trainers” at OOA Summer CME program, Oklahoma City, OK, Joan Stewart, D.O., M.P.H., Machelle Davison, Ed.D., Vicky Pace, M.Ed.
Media and Publications
Interview with Blayr Beougher with AgrAbility newsletter story, William J. Pettit, D.O.
Senior author of article published in a peer reviewed journal, (2008), Online Tools for Evaluating Patient Change Statistical Foundations, Clinical Applications, Research Relevance, Rehabilitation Psychology, 53(3), 313-320, Richard Bost, Ph.D., and others.
Review
Bioethics in Contemporary Society, by Jessica Pierce and George Randels, for publication. Book is an anthology with case studies intended for undergraduate courses in biomedical ethics taught in philosophy, religious studies, nursing and public health programs in addition to medical schools, William Steve Eddy, D.O., M.P.H.
“Preparation for Overseas Work Among a Group of U.S. Missionaries to Nicaragua” for Journal of Travel Medicine, Stanley E. Grogg, D.O.
Appointments
Education and Simulation Committees of the Oklahoma HealthCare Work Force Center, William Steve Eddy, D.O., M.P.H.
Subspecialty Editorial Board in Travel Medicine for American College of Osteopathic Pediatricians; appointed to OMECO Research Chair, Stanley E. Grogg, D.O. |
