BVU Student Sabrina Martinez Selected for January 2012 URMED Internship

Related Media

From left to right: Dr. Kristy McClellan, Sabrina Martinez, Cammy Matters, Whitney Nelson, Alex Davis and Dr. Richard Lampe.

STORM LAKE, IA (01/05/2012)(readMedia)-- The innovative Undergraduate Rural Medicine Education and Development (URMED) program developed four years ago through a partnership with Buena Vista University (BVU) and Buena Vista Regional Medical Center (BVRMC) has reached another milestone.

Starting in January, Lakes Area Healthcare at Spirit Lake will join the network of hospitals participating in URMED, which also includes BVRMC, Humboldt Community Hospital, Loring Hospital in Sac City and Pocahontas Community Hospital. The increase in hospital participation also created an additional internship position in the program.

BVRMC provides experiential learning opportunities throughout the academic year for BVU students pursuing careers in medicine and other health care professions, says Dr. Richard Lampe, professor of biology who helped develop the URMED partnership. Lampe is also current chair of the BVRMC board of trustees.

URMED is a capstone program that provides an intensive January internship for selected BVU pre-med students who have an interest in practicing rural medicine. Students compete for the January internship slots, which include $3,000 stipends to help defray the costs of applying to medical school.

The URMED program was designed as one possible solution to the impending national shortage of physicians and other healthcare practitioners in rural communities. URMED has attracted interest from the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine as well as a national program that seeks to interest young people in health care careers, notes Lampe.

While the URMED alumni have no obligation to return to the communities where they interned, BVU science faculty, and officials at BVRMC and the other participating hospitals stay in regular contact and build ongoing relationships with them. "We have already seen interest in several medical students in coming back to Storm Lake to practice," notes Lampe. The URMED program is also attracting new students interested in health care careers to BVU, he notes.

Students selected for the 2012 URMED January internships are:

* Cammy Matters, a junior biology major from Humboldt

* Whitney Nelson, a junior biology and history double major from Audubon

* Alex Davis, a junior biology major from Webster City

* Sabrina Martinez, a non-traditional student from Storm Lake, who is completing her pre-med course requirements at BVU. A 2008 Columbia University graduate in political science, she is a former admissions representative and assistant director of admissions at BVU.

Cammy, Whitney and Alex will each intern at BVRMC for two weeks and then one week at the hospitals in Humboldt, Sac City, or Pocahontas. Sabrina will spend all three weeks of her internship at Lakes Regional Healthcare at Spirit Lake.

During their internships, the students will work alongside physicians and other health care practitioners to learn what it is like to interact with patients in hospital, surgery, emergency room and clinical settings. They can also attend lectures and continuing education programs for medical staff.

The participating hospitals and BVU, through donor support, provide the financial resources for the stipends. "This year we had nine very fine URMED applicants but could only fund the four internships," notes Lampe. "If we had additional financial support and participation from other area hospitals we could grow the program to accommodate the interest that our BVU students are showing in rural medical careers."

So far, six BVU graduates and two current students have completed URMED January internships. Two are now enrolled in medical schools and others are working in related fields and plan to reapply to med schools, or are in graduate programs.

Two 2009 BVU graduates, Kyle Glienke, Aurelia, and James Alstott, Laurens also completed internships at BVRMC that became the model for the URMED program, says Lampe. They are third-year medical students at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine and were on campus in September to talk with URMED students about their experiences in medical school.

Though the outlook for physician staffing is probably better at BVRMC than many other rural hospitals, ongoing planning and programs such as URMED are critical to meeting future community health care needs, says Brad Strader, executive director of the Buena Vista Regional Healthcare Foundation and BVRMC physician recruiter.

A similar program for pre-dentistry students - the Undergraduate Rural Dentistry Internship (URDI) – provides experiences with two Storm Lake dentists, Dr. Chris Hansen and Dr. Dan Douglas. Started through a grant from Delta Dental Foundation, this program is now in its third year. The students selected for that program are Brooke Wehle, a junior biology major from Denison; and Serena Geisinger, a junior biology major from Lawton. Two of the three past recipients of the URDI Internship are currently enrolled in dental schools and the third is in the process of making application.