A recent Association of American Medical Colleges report continues to provide good news for the UNMC College of Medicine.
The AAMC Missions Management Tool, which provides annual reports, tracked medical students who graduated from UNMC between 2008-2013 and are now 10-15 years into their careers. It showed that 31.8% of those UNMC graduates were working in primary care, which is in the 99th percentile, with UNMC also appearing at the top for graduates practicing in family medicine, at 16%, the 96th percentile.
“This trend has been very high for numerous years,” said Kelly Caverzagie, MD, associate dean for educational strategy and learning environment for the UNMC College of Medicine. He congratulated Jeffrey Harrison, MD, chair of the UNMC Department of Family Medicine, on the numbers.
“Dr. Harrison, and Dr. (Mike) Sitorius before him, have taken great strides to ensure that UNMC is providing primary care physicians for the state, particularly in family medicine,” Dr. Caverzagie said.
For Dr. Harrison, the AAMC figures – which should be seen as a snapshot in time – showed that the department is delivering on its mission.
“These rankings near the top of the AAMC report align with our primary care ranking from the U.S. News and World Report, which is consistently in the magazine’s Top 10,” he said. “In some ways, though, the AAMC data may be even more impressive, as it shows what people are really doing.”
Dr. Harrison credited the medical school’s pathway programs and its strong clerkships with impressive preceptors as part of the reason for the department’s success.
“We are recruiting young people who have an interest in taking care of their own communities,” he said. “And once we get them here, we have superb family medicine clerkships.
“Students learn a lot. They have a good time. And they choose to go into the primary care specialties.
“Part of why we are so strong in these rankings, and why the family medicine clerkship is rated so well, is because we have an outstanding group of community preceptors who make it a positive experience,” Dr. Harrison said. “As we expand into the University of Nebraska at Kearney campus, having that same strong preceptor cohort is going to be critical.”
In addition to strong relationships with preceptors, many of whom are alumni, Dr. Harrison credited the strong residency programs at UNMC.
“That’s beyond just family medicine,” he said.
Asked to explain his own decision to practice family medicine, Dr. Harrison said it’s an easy specialty to fall in love with. “There are people who like to deliver babies and then see grandma in the nursing home at the end of the day, then help cover the high school athletic team on Friday night.
“Family medicine is still the one training you can do and be able to do all those things, and that’s still something you hear from our graduates. Although, over the years, family medicine has developed a narrower scope as the hospitalist systems have come along. But for true rural America, rural Nebraska, looking at those places where our recent grads are working, there is still that ability to ‘take care of everybody who lives in my community,’ within reason.”