Fall 00

New Consortium Partners Students With Primary Care Docs

The IU School of Medicine's Department of Family Medicine has joined with six Indiana organizations to address the state's continuing shortage of primary care physicians. Currently, sixty?six of Indiana's ninety?two counties are designated by the Indiana State Department of Health as having a health professional shortage or as medically underserved areas.

The Family Medicine Scholars Consortium was formed this year with the goal of increasing the number of medical school graduates entering primary care residencies. This fall, twenty-six students who completed their first year of medical school last spring were placed in family medicine preceptorships throughout Indiana and contiguous Illinois counties. Consortium members include Cinergy, Vectren, the Indiana State Department of Health, Terre Haute's Midwest Center for Rural Health, the Indiana Academy of Family Physicians and Deaconess Hospital in Evansville, Ind. "This isn't easy summer work," notes Brenda S. O'Hara, MD, director of pre?doctoral education at the Department of Family Medicine."The students work with a variety of health care professionals, interact with patients and see first hand the cultural and language barriers that can exist between physicians and patients. But what I often hear at the end of the summer from students is that this experience helped them to remember why they entered medical school in the first place."