Newswise — Two innovative programs--the Pritzker Initiative and REACH--are transforming the curriculum at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine and attracting young physicians to practice in underserved communities.
The Pritzker Initiative is a curriculum revision designed to increase student-faculty interactions and foster small-group, hands-on learning under the direct mentorship of world-renowned faculty physicians, researchers and clinical educators.
"Through the Pritzker Initiative, students will learn medicine at the cutting edge of biomedical science, translate that science into direct patient care and acquire an outstanding foundation as they prepare to become future doctors and leaders," said Holly Humphrey, M.D., professor of medicine and dean of medical education at Pritzker.
With that emphasis on mentorship and very personalized approach to medical education, the school will reduce its average class size from 104 new students each year to 88 by the fall of 2009, closer to its historical norms before a series of Federal incentives in the 1960s put pressure on all medical schools to increase their enrollments.
Reducing enrollment runs counter to national trends. The Association of American Medical Colleges, predicting a physician shortage, has urged medical schools to train 30 percent more physicians by 2015. Many medical schools have increased their enrollments and some states have created new medical schools to address the anticipated physician shortage. Several experts, however, have questioned the benefit of training more physicians overall.
The doctor-population ratio in the U.S. is at an all-time high, having risen from 200 doctors per 100,000 people in 1980, to a predicted 293 per 100,000 in 2010.
Many suspect the real problem may be one of access to physicians and where they practice, not one of overall supply.
The second new program, know as REACH, short for Repayment for Education to Alumni in Community Health, is an effort by the Medical Center to attract doctors to underserved communities. REACH, will provide financial support of $40,000 a year for up to four years, in addition to the physicians' salaries, to encourage Pritzker graduates to practice at a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) on Chicago's South Side.
The average medical graduate nationwide leaves school with a $140,000 debt. The REACH program will mark the first time a private academic medical center has implemented a program that helps its young graduates manage their debt while simultaneously helping patients with limited resources and access to care. The program will be open to any Pritzker graduate who has completed a residency and is practicing in primary care or one of several specialties in which there are too few physicians in the community.
"The high cost of college and medical education often prevents even the most altruistic young doctors from practicing in underserved areas," said James L. Madara, M.D., dean of biological sciences, Pritzker School of Medicine, and chief executive officer of the University of Chicago Medical Center. "This program will enable such physicians to take on leadership roles in underserved communities and set the agenda for clinical research and health care delivery in this setting."
The 1.1 million residents of Chicago's South Side form a diverse, but in many cases, chronically underserved population. The community has extremely high rates of hypertension, diabetes, asthma and other complex diseases. Ten to 15 percent of adults in the area are physically disabled.
"This will be a big step toward attracting more physicians to the community," said Eric Whitaker, M.D., executive vice president for strategic affiliations and associate dean at the Medical Center for community-based research.
Despite her substantial loan debt, "when thinking about my future career I went with my heart," said former Pritzker student Mia Lozada, M.D., after learning about REACH. "Primary care may not reap huge financial rewards," she added, "but that is where I feel I can make the most impact with my education that I've been so lucky to receive."
The Pritkzer School of Medicine, 16th among medical schools in the 2008 U.S. News & World Report rankings, has risen faster than any other top-50 medical school program in the past five years. It ranks fourth in the country--behind only Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Yale--for the percentage of its graduates who go into careers in academic medicine. Nearly 24 percent of all Pritzker graduates between 1989 and 1998 are now on the faculties at academic medical centers, nearly twice the national average.
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