Medical Students, Small Towns, and the Power of Relationships

By: Scott Hippe, fourth-year medical student, University of Washington School of Medicine Scott Hippe is currently traipsing about the Pacific Northwest on his clinical rotations. His interests include rural medicine, the outdoors, and listening to or telling a good story. He will be applying to a residency in family medicine this year. Before ever setting foot in a medical school classroom, I spent a week observing competent, compassionate rural physicians care for the diverse health needs of their community. This was the first of my experiences participating in the WWAMI Targeted Rural Underserved Track (TRUST) Program—described in a recent report by Greer and colleagues—which paired me with a small town in north-central Washington State named Chelan. Entering the program I had few expectations and little idea where it would take me. Now, over three years after my first experience, the program has guided my career plans. I will be entering a family medicine residency with a rural emphasis and I intend to practice in an underserved area in the Pacific Northwest. What between then and now sent me down this path? In a word, relationships. Relationships with my patients. In my third year, I spent a total of eighteen weeks in my TRUST continuity community, and during that time accumulated over 800 patient encounters. I established relationships and followed patients longitudinally. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed seeing patients that I knew for follow-up visits. Many i...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Tags: Guest Perspective relationships rural health Targeted Rural Underserved Track Program underserved communities WWAMI Source Type: blogs