Supported by federal grant, program will create students prepared to lead modern primary-care practices
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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – NORFOLK, Va. – Eastern Virginia Medical School is developing a virtual medical office that will prepare students to help lead the way in 21st-century primary care.
Backed by a five-year, $2.1 million federal grant, the Predoctoral Education for Advancing Community Health (PEACH) project will create a simulated community health center where medical students will learn how to manage complicated cases effectively within a busy practice.
“The goal is to teach not just primary-care medicine, but to teach primary-care practice systems that are necessary to achieve success for the patients. Every week they’re going to be going to their simulated medical office and taking care of patients as if they were interns in a family-practice residency,” said Bruce Britton, MD, associate professor of family and community medicine and PEACH project leader.
“It’s getting them ready for 21st-century primary care. If they go into primary care, they’ll be better prepared. If they go into a specialty, they’ll be better prepared to interact with the primary-care physicians that are in there community.”
EVMS’ Theresa A. Thomas Professional Skills Teaching & Assessment Center will house the program. The center is renowned nationally for pioneering the use of standardized patients — people specially trained to mimic certain symptoms and provide detailed feedback to students and doctors.
“What we’re trying to do is reflect a day in the life of a physician in practice,” said Gayle Gliva, the center’s director. She said some other institutions have training programs that incorporate parts of a real practice, such as using electronic medical records, but none are presenting a total picture like this.
The virtual office will incorporate concepts of patient-centered medical home model, a relatively new approach within family medicine that puts the primary-care physician as the point person for all of a given patient’s medical needs. The primary physician is, in essence, the coach of the team of physicians that might care for someone, coordinating with specialists and marshalling resources to ensure the best outcome for each person.
“The idea is for the primary-care physician and the community specialists to coordinate care better so that every patient gets what they need, not too much and not too little,” Dr. Britton said.
The basic framework of the PEACH project stems from the exisiting Electronic Health Record Laboratory. That program — led by Christine C. Matson, MD, chair and professor of family and community medicine, and supported by an internal grant from the Office of the Vice Provost of Planning and Health Professions, C. Donald Combs, PhD — trains health-care providers how to balance the use of electronic health records with the need to establish a strong doctor-patient relationship.
About EVMS:
EVMS was founded by the community in 1973 to improve health through teaching, discovering and caring. The collaborative culture at EVMS draws like-minded students and faculty from all over the country, encourages a multidisciplinary approach to health care and emphasizes translational research. In just 36 years, the school has grown from 24 students to an economic footprint exceeding $700 million annually in the region of southeastern Virginia known as Hampton Roads. Learn more at www.evms.edu.
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