LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The University of Louisville School of Medicine Trover Rural Campus recently was rated third best in the nation for identifying, nurturing and educating medical students who have an identified interest in future rural practice.
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Colorado, ranked the percentage of graduates in rural practice for 35 programs throughout the United States. Sixty-two percent of the graduates of the UofL School of Medicine Trover Campus in Madisonville chose rural locations for their practice sites after graduation. The program trailed only East Tennessee State University and Louisiana State University. A report will be published in the premier medical education journal Academic Medicine in August.
“This national recognition is the fulfillment of Dr. Loman Trover’s vision outlined almost 60 years ago of providing first class medical education in a small town with the goal of producing more physicians for rural Kentucky, and is a testament to the strong support we’ve had from the Louisville Campus over the past 15 years,” said Bill Crump, M.D., associate dean for the Trover campus. “From the President and the deans to the individual faculty and staff, our team has proven the value of a collaboration of a rural campus and an urban university. The beneficiaries are our students and the rural Kentucky communities who receive these new doctors who are well prepared to care for them.”
Nationally, only 3 percent of medical students report an interest in rural practice, while 20 percent of Americans live in rural areas, causing a severe physician maldistribution problem. This problem is especially large in Kentucky, with 59 of the 120 counties classified as rural, and almost 60 percent considered to be health professional shortage areas.
“One of our missions is to educate and train physicians to care for the people of Kentucky no matter where they live,” said Toni Ganzel, M.D, M.B.A., dean of the UofL School of Medicine. “Our Trover campus is vital to fulfilling this mission and especially critical now because our state faces such a significant shortage of physicians, especially in rural areas. Dr. Crump’s leadership of the program is one of the reasons for its success. We view the program as a model that has the potential to be implemented in other areas of Kentucky.”