by Caleb Fort
Daily Lobo
UNM received $670,000 from the Legislature to start a program aimed at keeping New Mexico medical students in the state as doctors.
The two main goals of the joint bachelor's degree and medical doctor program are to increase student diversity and provide doctors for places in New Mexico that need them, said Jennifer Riordan, spokeswoman for the Health Sciences Center.
"We want more doctors in the medically underserved parts of the state, and we want the students to accurately reflect the population of the state," Riordan said.
The funding is supposed to increase the size of the medical school's classes from 75 students per year to 100 students per year.
Paul Roth, dean of the School of Medicine, said funding covers one year of the eight-year program.
He said UNM will have to get money from the Legislature every year to continue funding the program.
Ellen Cosgrove, senior associate dean for education at the School of Medicine, said students accepted to the program should be able to complete it.
"We're confident that the Legislature will realize that we've made a moral commitment to these students to be in the program for eight years and will give us the appropriate funding," she said.
Although the program is eight years long, students will have the option to lengthen or shorten that time, she said.
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Cosgrove said students selected to participate in the program will complete four years of undergraduate study at UNM with an emphasis on liberal arts, social sciences and humanities and strong preparation in courses relevant to their future medical studies.
When they complete their undergraduate degree, students will complete four years of study at the School of Medicine.
The program will try to draw students from medically underserved areas, which include most of the state, Roth said.
He said 30 of New Mexico's 33 counties are medically underserved, according to federal statistics. Only Santa Fe, Los Alamos and Bernalillo counties have an adequate ratio of doctors to patients, he said.
Several factors contribute to poor doctor-patient ratios in New Mexico, such as doctors choosing to work in cities instead of small communities and an overall shortage of doctors in the state, he said.
Roth said the program is the first time UNM's medical school has tried to directly recruit high school students instead of college students.
"We are wanting to directly approach promising high school students and guarantee them a slot in medical school," Roth said.
UNM will begin recruiting this fall, he said.
Roth said three factors usually influence where a newly graduated doctor decides to practice medicine. Doctors tend to practice close to where they had their residency, in communities where they or their spouse has roots and in communities that are ethnically similar to them, he said. Roth said the program will take all of these factors into account to maximize the number of doctors who stay in New Mexico.
Roth said combined-degree programs are in place at 36 medical schools across the country. However, UNM's program will be unique because of the emphasis it places on putting doctors into communities that need them, he said.
"Our program is different, because we are designing it to create excellent practitioners in the state of New Mexico," Roth said. "We are all very, very enthusiastic and confident that this is an extraordinary program that will - if it receives adequate funding - substantially increase the quality of medical care in New Mexico."
The program is a partnership between the College of Arts and Sciences and UNM's School of Medicine, Cosgrove said.
