By Jane Gargas
By JANE GARGAS
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC
It’s the right dose, and everyone’s on board, they say.
The health-care community is anticipating a close working relationship with students at Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences, say local medical practitioners.
Officials at the area hospitals, clinics and higher educational facilities say they see great potential for cross pollination of services.
The osteopathic school is coming at a crucial time, explained Dr. Michael Maples, chief executive officer of Central Washington Family Medicine in Yakima.
“What I see as the primary benefit is getting more health-care providers into under-served rural areas,” he said.
“Nationally we’re not training enough physicians. That’s particularly true in primary care and particularly true in the Pacific Northwest,” added Maples, who serves on the medical school’s board of trustees.
That’s where the new school comes in, agreed Dr. Gregory Sawyer, a psychiatrist who is vice president of medical practices at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital.
“The osteopathic school is probably the perfect solution to filling the need for more primary-care physicians,” Sawyer said.
Nor is that the only benefit, noted Monte Bostwick, CEO of Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center.
“It’s already had an impact on recruiting physicians to come here,” he said. “Many are very interested in participating at the school, maybe even teaching there part time.”
The facility also will attract medical experts from around the country as visiting lecturers, which area physicians will be welcome to attend, Sawyer pointed out.
Kathleen Ross, president of Heritage University in Toppenish, looks to the new school as a boost to undergraduates as well.
“Heritage’s programs in clinical laboratory science and in nursing will undoubtedly be strengthened by the presence of additional medical and health science education in our region,” she wrote in an e-mail to the Yakima Herald-Republic.
President Linda Kaminski of Yakima Valley Community College is equally optimistic about cooperative efforts with the medical school. She envisions that YVCC and the new university may share laboratory space and clinical opportunities.
“The medical school will probably be a real good match with our surgical technology students in particular,” she noted.
Both Yakima hospitals will offer training opportunities in the form of clerkships to third- and fourth-year students.
“There are a number of physicians interested in taking on the responsibility of overseeing students here,” said Bostwick.
Sawyer predicted a similar response from health-care providers at Memorial Hospital. “Memorial will be involved just about every year of the four years (students attend the school).”
It’s also likely, Sawyer believes, that students from other osteopathic schools around the country will travel here to serve six- week clerkships in various medical specialties.
Both Bostwick and Sawyer foresee the hospitals offering residencies to the university’s graduates. Residencies are extra years of training that physicians undergo in order to practice in primary-care or sub-specialty fields.
Students will rotate through various practices that are part of Central Washington Family Medicine, Maples explained. They’ll take histories and perform physicals, under the tutelage of a physician preceptor.
Family Medicine also will offer family-practice residencies, just as it does now for about six graduates a year from the University of Washington Medical School.
That means a Pacific Northwest student might do a clerkship at Family Medicine, complete a residency there after graduation and — here’s the payoff — practice medicine here after completing training.
“That’s something we’re aspiring to,” said Maples, noting that osteopathic schools (which award doctor of osteopathy, D.O., degrees) have a better track record than allopathic (which award medical doctor, M.D., degrees) in training physicians to practice in under-served areas, such as Yakima.
Other medical facilities, such as the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic, also are expected to offer clerkships and rotations for medical residents.
Maples conceded that overseeing students and residents at a clinic takes time away from a physician’s schedule, meaning that he or she will be able to see fewer patients in a day and thus generate less income.
“It’s definitely a public service,” he said, “but that’s how all physicians learned.”
In his experience, Sawyer said that local M.D.s are embracing the school as vigorously as D.O.s are.
“I haven’t heard anything from physicians that hasn’t been positive,” he said. “And with the overwhelming number of patients we’re seeing in Yakima, you couldn’t find a physician who doesn’t want more family practitioners here.”
Maples agreed, saying that physicians will make no distinction between how they teach an M.D. candidate and a D.O. one. “They’ll have the same high expectations.”
Kaminski, of YVCC, struck a harmonious note echoed by others in health-education fields here:
“This school is a monumental development. There hasn’t been anything in my 13 years here that will change the image of Yakima as much as this.”
(c) 2008 Yakima Herald-Republic. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Comments