Jefferson’s Rural Physicians Program Expands into Delaware
The
Department of Family and Community Medicine of Jefferson Medical
College, Thomas Jefferson University has received a three-year grant
from the Bureau of Health Professions (Health Resources and Services
Administration, US Department of Health and Human Services) to expand
its medical school educational programs. One of the five components of
this expansion is to extend Jefferson’s rural Physician Shortage Area
Program (PSAP) to the state of Delaware.
“The
PSAP is a nationally and internationally known program which has been
very successful in increasing the supply and retention of rural
physicians,” said Howard Rabinowitz, M.D., professor of Family Medicine
and director of the PSAP. “We hope that we can build upon Jefferson’s
longstanding relationship with Delaware and expand this program to help
the rural areas in the southern portion of the state, which desperately
need primary care physicians.”
Since
1974 the PSAP has selected and educated medical school applicants who
have grown up in rural areas or small towns – and who are committed to
practicing family medicine in a similar area. The PSAP has enrolled
five to ten students per class in recent years, and includes a strong
mentorship component, along with rural clinical educational
experiences.
The
expansion of the PSAP into Delaware will focus on the two downstate
rural underserved counties (Sussex and Kent), with a goal of providing
at least two additional matriculants into the program each year.
Working with its Delaware partners, the Delaware Institute of Medical
Education and Research (DIMER), the University of Delaware, and the
Department of Family and Community Medicine at Christiana Care Health
System, Jefferson plans to help develop a pipeline for rural raised
high school and college students, and to integrate the additional PSAP
students from Delaware into the existing program.
Previous outcomes of Jefferson’s rural program, which have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA),
have shown that PSAP graduates are more than eight times as likely as
their classmates to practice family medicine in rural and underserved
areas, and their long-term retention rate is the highest ever reported.
In addition, the PSAP has had a major impact on the rural physician
workforce – accounting for 21 percent of all rural family physicians
practicing in Pennsylvania who graduated from one of the seven
allopathic medical schools in the state, despite the fact that PSAP
students represent only one percent of those graduates.
“Most
of our graduates who practice in a rural setting are professionally
very satisfied and report a very good quality of life,” said
Rabinowitz. “They like the small town feel, the sense of helping their
community, and knowing most of their patients more intimately then a
doctor in a large city.”
In order to achieve its goals, the grant includes:
1.
Establishing a Delaware PSAP Advisory Committee and developing a formal
plan to recruit and admit students from rural Delaware who are
committed to practicing rural family medicine.
2. Expanding the PSAP Cooperative Program, which currently includes six Pennsylvania colleges and universities, to include
the University of Delaware.
3.
Having Dr. Rabinowitz and other Jefferson faculty visit the University
of Delaware yearly to promote PSAP, meet with interested students, and
work with its three Delaware partners to identify other strategies to
increase the number of Delaware applicants and matriculants to the
PSAP.
Planning
for this expansion of the PSAP to Delaware will take place during the
first year of the grant with a goal of matriculating at least two
additional students from Sussex and Kent counties by the third and
subsequent years. It is hoped that this will result in enrolling as
many as 20 potential new rural physicians into the PSAP over the next
decade, most of whom will end up practicing in downstate Delaware.
Media Only Contact:
Richard Cushman
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
Phone: (215) 955-6300
Published: 1/11/2008