Page 4 - Sunflower Health Network - Newsletter Winter 2014

Page 4 Continued from page 3. This afforded an additional 8 students the opportunity to complete their entire undergraduate medical education in Wichita. Enrollment is currently expanded to 28 students. Prospective students rank their campus preference at the time of their application with campus assignments made at acceptance. Salina Program In 2001 the Rural Track program was started in Salina. This program allowed a maximum of 4 students from either Wichita or Kansas City to complete the last eighteen months of their training in a rural setting. Success of this program paved the way for the four‐year branch campus in Salina which first accepted students in 2011. The Salina program was created to address Kansas’s critical shortage of physicians. Located in a rural community, the Salina campus also utilizes the innovative method of delivering medical education via interactive television, in which students at all three campuses participate as a group in lectures for basic sciences and clinical didactics. Admitting only eight students each year, the KUMC‐Salina campus is the smallest four‐year medical education site in the country. In 2013, Salina’s inaugural class of students started their required clerkships in Family Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Neurology, Psychiatry, Geriatrics and Surgery. Local physicians serve as Assistant Clerkship Directors in their own specialty and have a close association with their counterparts on the main campus in Kansas City. Sunflower Health Network Community Preceptors The Sunflower Health Network’s 17 member hospitals, in conjunction with their medical staffs, have developed a network that fosters cooperation and coordination and offers many training sites for medical students. The communities within the Sunflower Health Network are official affiliate sites and host students in all years of training and all of the programs discussed above. Beloit offers a very robust Family Medicine practice and a physician dually certified in Family Medicine and General Surgery. Clay Center is actively involved in student education and KUMC frequently has more than one student request that site for the same rotation in Clay Center! Abilene, another Sunflower Health Network community, hosted a student last year for the Summer Elective. And the list goes on and on. It was through the efforts of a group of dedicated community physicians that the School of Medicine was originally begun as a “Preparatory Medical Course” in 1880. Through the efforts of these dedicated physicians, KUMC officially opened on September 6, 1905. Community physicians have, from its inception, been a vital part of educating University of Kansas School of Medicine students. We all know it takes a village to raise a child. In Kansas, it takes a state to educate its doctors – and Kansas has developed many programs to do just that! For more information on any of the above mentioned programs, please contact Debra Lea, with the office of Rural Medical Education, in Kansas City by email at dlea@kumc.edu . Scholars in Rural Health ‐ KU School of Medicine Contributed By K. James Kallail, PhD, Director, Scholars in Rural Health, University of Kansas Medical School The KU Scholars in Rural Health program (website information: www.kumc.edu/school‐of‐ medicine/education/ premedical‐programs/scholars‐in‐rural‐health.html) is designed to identify and encourage undergraduate students from rural Kansas who are interested in building successful careers as physicians in rural areas. Students apply for the program in the second semester of their sophomore year in college. The program provides assured admission to the University of Kansas School of Medicine for selected students upon successful completion of program requirements and graduation from their undergraduate institution. Students in the Scholars in Rural Health program discover the rewards and challenges of rural