Guest opinion: With cooperation, medical school ready to thrive
Spokane has a great medical school at the Riverpoint campus thanks to years of successful collaboration between the University of Washington and Washington State University. Accredited to the UW School of Medicine, Spokane’s medical school contributes to and shares in the top ranking from U.S. News & World Report for over 20 years – No. 1 in the country in primary care, family medicine and rural medicine.
Spokane’s medical school started in 2008 as an expansion of the WWAMI program – a regional medical education program provided by the UW School of Medicine in partnership with universities from the WWAMI states (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho) with WSU-Pullman an acting partner for 42 years. The program was designed to train physicians in their home states – states that did not have their own medical school – and particularly to provide training in underserved rural areas in those states with the hope that physicians would return to work there after they completed their education.
For years, medical students in the WWAMI program would have only the opportunity of spending their first year of medical school training in their home state or region. Then, in 2008, the UW, in collaboration with WSU, began to offer the WWAMI model of medical school in Spokane – with all but the second year of instruction occurring here. This past year, the UW and WSU began to offer the second year in Spokane as well, enabling students to earn their medical degrees while studying and training for all four years in Spokane. Spokane’s medical school is up and running and training new doctors right now.
Producing doctors comes in two phases: four years of medical school followed typically by three or more years of residency training. After four years of medical school, students seek placement in a residency program in their chosen specialty, and that residency program can take them anywhere in the United States. Where one ends up practicing medicine is very closely correlated to where one does residency training, not medical school.
As part of its WWAMI program, the UW School of Medicine has built an expansive network of residency training programs throughout the state of Washington and the Northwest. The UW has been training residents in Spokane’s hospitals and clinics for virtually all of its 42 years, as well as in rural hospitals and clinics throughout Eastern Washington. Born and raised in Seattle, I went to college and medical school at the UW in Seattle. But it was my training in the WWAMI program over my third and fourth years of medical school that brought me out to Spokane, Missoula, Great Falls and Boise, and the eventual return to establish my private neurology practice in Spokane, where I have been working over the past 20 years. We are at the start of a great expansion here in Spokane and without the WWAMI program this was unlikely to occur.
With an established program in place, the UW and WSU both agree that Spokane’s medical school needs to grow faster to meet the region’s health care needs. With the increased number of people with medical insurance through the Affordable Care Act, the need for family and primary care physicians is increasing rapidly. Moreover, a generation of excellent physicians practicing in small rural communities is reaching retirement age and must be replaced. Spokane’s medical school needs to expand and produce more doctors and place them in residency training programs throughout Eastern Washington.
The UW is ready for this expansion, and it plans to do it as it has all along, in collaboration with WSU. As more students enroll and faculty are added to teach them, we will see increased Spokane-based research into diseases and their prevention and treatment, bringing added economic and health care benefits to the Spokane community.
The foundation exists right now to build upon our groundbreaking medical school in Spokane, and, with funding from the Washington Legislature in 2015, plans are in place to quadruple the number of medical students over the next five years. While collaboration isn’t always easy, it is a proven and effective way to expand opportunities, leverage resources and greatly exceed the sum of the parts. The UW is prepared to grow its long-standing partnership with WSU and its investment in Spokane. With our two fine universities working together, it won’t take very long.