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MEDICAL
EDUCATION
Texas’ Primary Care Profile After starting at Weatherford College, she got a scholarship to
TCU and continued to work on average 24 hours to 30 hours per
State Population: 26,956,958 week, and 16 hours per week through her first year of medical school
“until I couldn’t do it anymore. When I graduated, I did a family
Population in Primary Care Shortage Areas: medicine residency in Fort Worth and went into rural practice and
5,211,605 ultimately ended up choosing an academic career and still finding
ways to work on rural medicine issues. But for a lot of kids, it never
Active Physicians: 57,502 crossed their mind they could do this.”
Primary Care Physicians: 19,234 Seven of the Pathway’s inaugural students are recent high school
graduates, and one is an older student who worked after high school.
Active Patient Care Physicians Many of them would be first-generation college graduates, let alone
per 100,000 Population doctors, “which is exciting,” Ms. Wade added. “You’d be amazed at
the community college level at things as simple as, ‘I don’t have gas
State Rank: 42 money for the end of month.’ Now we can step up to the plate with
funds, but too often we don’t know about it.”
Active Patient Care Primary Care
Physicians per 100,000 Population Early Exposure
Educators also agree exposing students to primary care early —
State Rank: 47
and often — is an important factor in their decision to choose the
Total Residents/Fellows in ACGME specialty.
Programs per 100,000 Population
In addition to the academic curriculum, for instance, Pathway
State Rank: 22 students complete two summer internships: The first summer, be-
tween their first and second years at Midland College, students par-
Total Residents/Fellows in Primary Care ticipate in a clinically oriented program at Midland Memorial to
ACGME Programs per 100,000 Population introduce them to basic medical practice and concepts like profes-
sionalism and teamwork. The second summer program, when stu-
State Rank: 32 dents transfer to UNT Denton, offers hands-on training in clinical
skills labs to learn things like how to assess vital signs.
Note: Texas’ rankings are compared with the other 49
states. A No. 1 ranking goes to the state with the high- “These are things we expect all applicants to do somewhere along
est value. the line, and we are creating the experience for [Midland College
students] so they don’t have to go find it,” Dr. Peska said.
Sources: U.S. Health Resources and Services Adminis-
tration, Association of American Medical Colleges 2015 In addition to the opportunity to shadow physicians, for example,
State Physician Workforce Data Book Midland Memorial is working with the West Texas Area Health Ed-
ucation Center to create a community health coaching program,
modeled after a joint project between Angelo State University and
Shannon Medical Center in San Angelo. Under supervision of a
physician assistant, premed students visit chronically ill patients in
their homes, for example, to check on their health status and quality
of life, identify possible needs, make sure patients get to their ap-
pointments, and report back to the doctors and nurses who coordi-
nate their care.
“We’ll work with premed students at Midland, get them accli-
mated to a medical environment, and they’ll have some contact with
people in the community so when they come back to Midland as a
DO, they’ve already gained some valuable experience. And it might
help us reduce readmissions in the process,” said Bob Dent. A nurse
continued on page 18
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