Partnership provides a change of scenery for medical students

The ingredients: 24 third-year VCU medical students, a busy Northern Virginia hospital with more than four decades of teaching experience, and an infinite, diverse patient base.

The result: the VCU-INOVA partnership.

“It’s an exciting program that gives students a unique opportunity to practice (medicine) in a different setting than here,” said Jim Messmer, senior associate dean for medical education, of the joint venture with INOVA Fairfax Hospital.

Two dozen third-year students who began their clerkships at the hospital this past August will rotate through 48 weeks of hands-on training. They will learn in areas such as psychiatry, surgery, neurology and pediatrics.

“It’s like planting a seed. It doesn’t bear fruit for years, but then it’s there for a long time.”

– Jim Messmer, senior associate dean for medical education, said of the partnership

Of the 5,000 annual medical school applicants to VCU, only 180 students are accepted into the program, Messmer said. As the numbers narrow, candidates submit applications and additional fees, as well as arrange interviews.

When interviewed, students must declare where they prefer to perform clinical rotations by choosing VCU Medical Center, INOVA Fairfax Hospital, or both.

“Those who pick Fairfax are likely from Virginia,” Messmer said. “An applicant, say, from California doesn’t know Fairfax from Richmond.”

Students who participate in the INOVA program receive an education identical to the one they would get at VCU Medical Center, he said, explaining that the Fairfax campus has its own administrative staff, student affairs coordinator, counseling services and other academic support services.

Two months ago at the Fairfax campus, groundbreaking took place for the Claude Moore Health Education Center. The facility will house classroom space, administrative offices and a simulation center for third-year students.

“It’s an ideal setting for students,” Messmer said.

Sheldon Retchin, vice president for health sciences and CEO for VCU Health Systems, said the population growth in Fairfax County the past decade has exploded, and a lack of public medical schools in the Northern Virginia area led VCU to establish a geographically distant campus there.

The partnership benefits both the area and medical students.

“It will directly benefit Northern Virginia,” Retchin said. “Fairfax Hospital was chosen because of its high patient-volume.”

Craig Cheifetz, assistant dean of medical education on the INOVA campus, said that while VCU Medical Center is in Richmond, it still has a finite patient-base that has not expanded for some time because of a lack of growth in the city.

Fairfax Hospital, however, offers a much larger, more diverse patient-base, he said, adding that northern Virginia not only has the lone Level-1 trauma center, but that it also has the third-busiest obstetrics programs in the nation.

“The patient base (at Fairfax Hospital) is often international because of its proximity to Dulles Airport,” he said.

Moreover, Cheifetz said the partnership with Fairfax Hospital will provide more physicians for the Northern Virginia area in the future.

“There’s a possible chain,” he said. “Students who train in the area tend to stay in the area, becoming providers.”

The first few months of the partnership, modeled after a similar one at the University of Phoenix, have gone well, Cheifetz said, referring to the years of planning that created a highly successful program without unexpected events.

“There’s a slightly different mindset at a branch campus,” he explained. “There is a greater emphasis on the adult-learning model. Students who are fairly self-directed seem to thrive here.”

Cheifetz said students are performing well, so much so that in January, the program earned accreditation with zero citations.

Retchin said while students in the curriculum have been at the Fairfax campus only four months, VCU already is looking toward future growth of the program.

“We’re interested in seeing expansion into other disciplines like establishing a School of Pharmacy there,” he said.

Messmer said eventually, collaborative research will become a major part of the INOVA program as hospitals and medical practices continue to change.

“We’re moving toward evidence-based or outcomes-based medicine,” he said.

For example, researchers now study results of groups of patients who have received certain drugs for specific conditions.

The hospital setting, he said, has changed tremendously in the last 10 to 15 years. A decade ago, tests typically were run in hospitals, and an average in-patient stay lasted two weeks or more. Today, the trend is toward outpatient services.

Messmer said he believes that medical education is changing as well and calls the VCU-INOVA partnership an exciting project.

“It’s like planting a seed,” he said. “It doesn’t bear fruit for years, but then it’s there for a long time.”