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SMHS among top five for family medicine physicians

2016
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GRAND FORKS, N.D.—A study completed by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) noted that the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences was again among the top five contributors to building the nation’s family physician workforce. This is the 35th national study conducted by the American Academy of Family Physicians that reports retrospectively the percentage of graduates from U.S. Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME)-accredited; American Osteopathic Association (AOA)-accredited; and international medical schools who enter Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)-accredited family medicine residency programs as first-year residents. A residency is a period of advanced intensive training for medical school graduates in their chosen medical specialty before independent practice as a physician. A rank-order list of MD-granting medical schools was created by researchers at the AAFP that was based on the last three years’ average percentage of graduates who became family medicine residents, using the 2015 and prior AAFP census data. “This annual report is one measure of the effectiveness of medical schools to produce a primary care workforce, a key measure of social responsibility, as measured by their production of graduates entering into family medicine,” said the authors of the AAFP report. “Primary care has been demonstrated to improve healthcare outcomes and reduce health disparities while reducing per capita costs.” Top schools employ several initiatives that support students who are interested in and most likely to become family physicians. Those initiatives include student outreach, admissions policies that target students from rural and medically underserved areas, clinical rotations that emphasize positive experiences in family medicine, faculty involvement in medical school committees, strong family medicine interest groups, and financial aid packages that help to reduce student debt. The UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences has several unique programs designed to educate students about the benefits of family medicine. The nationally recognized Rural Opportunities in Medical Education (ROME) program places third-year medical students in several rural communities in North Dakota for a seven-month rotation. In 2010, the UND SMHS signed its first RuralMed Scholar; currently there are 24 recipients in the program. The goal of the RuralMed Scholarship Program is to recruit, educate, and retain physicians who will practice family medicine in rural North Dakota. The program absorbs the tuition costs for all four years of medical school for students who agree to practice family medicine in a rural area of North Dakota for five years.

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University of North Dakota

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