The College of Community Health Sciences has expanded learning opportunities in rural medicine in Alabama for its medical students. Enterprise has been added as a third community learning site, joining existing sites in Demopolis and Pell City.
In its role as a regional campus of the UAB Heersink School of Medicine, CCHS provides the third and fourth years of medical school (clinical education) to a cohort of medical students. All medical students spend their first two years at the Heersink School of Medicine’s main campus in Birmingham before completing their final two years at either the Birmingham campus, CCHS or one of the other regional campuses – Montgomery and Huntsville.
At CCHS, medical students complete their clinical education as part of the College’s Primary Care Track, which is the only medical education track of its kind at the Heersink School of Medicine. CCHS is the only regional campus with a medical education track focused on primary care.
As part of the Primary Care Track curriculum, medical students spend their third year in a longitudinal integrated clerkship (LIC), where they follow a panel of patients over time and through different specialties and health-care settings. For example, students can care for a pregnant patient, deliver her baby and care for the newborn. This differs from the traditional third-year model, where every four to eight weeks students rotate through a different specialty, often in a hospital setting.
The third-year clerkship is divided into two 24-week blocks: CCHS medical students spend half of their third year in the Tuscaloosa Immersion Experience and the other half in either the Tuscaloosa Integrated Experience or the Community Integrated Experience.
In the Community Integrated Experience, students work closely with private practice physicians in Demopolis, Pell City and will in Enterprise beginning in May, learning what it means to practice medicine in a rural community. The students spend either half or full days each week in different specialty clinics in the communities. They develop relationships with patients, observe how their diseases progress over time and get to know the patients in the context of their communities and families rather than just as episodes of illness or disease.
“We hope the experience gives the students a true sense of what it’s like to be a small-town doctor,” said Dr. Grier Stewart, CCHS assistant dean for undergraduate medical education. “Evidence shows that if we train students in these small towns and rural areas, they’re more likely to practice in those communities.”
The medical students at each Community Integrated Experience site learn under the supervision of the community site leaders, who are the primary point of contact for the
students and responsible for creating and supervising student schedules with community preceptors. The site leaders are Dr. Ashley Steiner in Demopolis, Dr. Hunter Russell in Pell City and Dr. Beverly Jordan in Enterprise. All three are graduates of the College’s Family Medicine Residency Program.
In the Tuscaloosa Integrated Experience, students spend full or half days each week in different specialty clinics at University Medical Center under the supervision of UMC physician faculty. They also spend time with physician preceptors in the Tuscaloosa community. UMC, which is operated by CCHS, serves as the foundation for the College’s clinical teaching program for medical students and its family medicine resident physicians.
In the second block, the Tuscaloosa Immersion Experience, students work alongside physician faculty at UMC, moving through rotations in pediatrics, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, surgery and neurology. They also spend time with physician preceptors in the Tuscaloosa community.
Stewart said CCHS is excited about the new Community Integrated Experience site in Enterprise. “Dr. Jordan has been a great friend of the College and has done great things with our students in the past. We know this is going to be a great experience.”