Med students train in community classroom
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A group of students began medical school Tuesday, part of an immersion program that includes shadowing physicians and other health care professionals in order to get firsthand knowledge of community medicine in Beaufort.
The eight will spend the next three years of their medical school experience embedded into the Lowcountry's community health system, taking classes via laptops and satellite feeds.
The students completed their first year of classes at A.T. Still University in Arizona. The next three will be at Beaufort-Jasper-Hampton Comprehensive Health. Traditional medical schools keep students in classrooms for their first two years then they do get clinical experience. The local program is one of 10 partnerships nationwide with A.T. Still, chosen to recruit doctors to the regions they are needed most. Beaufort-Jasper-Hampton Comprehensive Health is a federally qualified health center, which means it serves an area that is medically underserved, according to the S.C. Primary Health Care Association.
"The opportunity you have here will be once in a lifetime," said Roland Gardner, executive director of Comp Health. Gardner said the room of students and health center officials would get to know the unique mix of people and cultures in the Beaufort area. Gardner also explained that as the first group of students in the new program, there were risks because the program does not rest on years of experience.
He said that was outweighed by the opportunity to contribute to the community served the eight health centers, generally those whose access to medical care is compromised. Those patients tend to be those living in poverty.
And the commitment to helping the community and the opportunity treat patients earlier than most medical students are the reasons the students said they enrolled in the program.
Student Kory Parsi said that he knew he wanted to be a part of the program during an interview day when he learned about the center's relationship with the community and the positive affect it has had on individual and community health.
"It made me think, 'How could I do anything else?'" he said.
For Kristina Johnson, her commitment to serve those who typically do not get adequate medical help drew her to the program. Another student, Nicole Warren, said she wanted the clinical experience that the program offered.
"I'd rather be in the community and get the experience," she said. "My fear is being overloaded, but it will be worth it."
The eight students meet with their instructors LaFrance Ferguson and Faith Polkey get an introduction to farmworker health in the area and tour the Penn Center to learn about Gullah culture for the remainder of their orientation week.