August 31, 2016
When one of Elizabeth Junkin’s patients, a man in his 50s, came to a rural family-medicine clinic with abdominal pain, she suspected appendicitis. She recommended a CT scan that confirmed her diagnosis, then drove to the local hospital in Carrollton, Ala., to check on the man. No surgeons were available, so the emergency surgery he needed could not be performed there. With all ambulances at least a 2-hour drive away, Junkin helped arrange a helicopter flight to DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa. She met the man there, assisted with his surgery and followed up with him the next day. Junkin did all this not as a doctor, but as a third-year medical student at the University of Alabama School of Medicine’s Tuscaloosa Regional Campus. She’s part of an innovative program called the Tuscaloosa Longitudinal Community Curriculum, or TLC², created by
