Coronavirus
KU medical students to graduate early to help rural Kansas fight coronavirus pandemic
Students from the University of Kansas School of Medicine are headed into rural parts of the state to help those underserved communities fight the coronavirus pandemic.
More than 50 fourth-year med students from the campuses in Kansas City, Salina and Wichita asked to graduate early so they could participate in the Kansas Pandemic Volunteer Health Care Workforce, the school announced on Friday.
The students who volunteer “will be immediately granted the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the university and will be eligible for a special permit to practice medicine from the Kansas Board of Healing Arts,” the school said in a statement.
The Liaison Committee on Medical Education, a national accrediting body, has approved the early graduations, the school said. The students will do this before they begin serving residencies across the country.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment will run the program, and John Alley, an assistant professor of surgery at the medical school and a major in the Kansas National Guard, will oversee the day-to-day operations, the school said.
The graduates will be required to work with another physician.
From coast to coast, medical students are answering a growing call to help an overwhelmed health care workforce.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom this week said, “If you’re a nursing school student, a medical school student, we need you,” ABC News reported.
Fourth-year students from Rutgers New Jersey Medical School are graduating six weeks early via virtual graduation ceremonies so they can start residencies early in hospitals where they’re needed now, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
In rural Kansas, many physicians “are already overworked, and the addition of a surge in health care utilization could overburden these physicians to the breaking point,” Mike Kennedy, professor and associate dean of Rural Health Education at KU’s medical school, said in the statement.
He said 34 Kansas counties have only one or two physicians, and many doctors and entire health care systems teeter on the financial brink and could collapse without help. (Any that need help from this program can email pandemicvolunteer@kumc.edu.) The pandemic is threatening hospitals in Missouri with financial ruin as well.
Lee Norman, Kansas secretary of health and environment and a colonel in the Kansas Army National Guard, said he was “pleased to activate” the guard “to provide the personnel to assist in placing these students where they can be most helpful to our state.”
The students will receive training and a stipend for their expenses. The program will be funded by a $1 million gift from the Patterson Family Foundation, created by the late Neal Patterson, co-founder of Cerner Corp., and his wife, Jeanne Lillig-Patterson, who died in 2017.
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