Pulse
Family Medicine’s Fan Club
Medical students are the specialty’s biggest boosters.
By Carmen Peota
Two years ago, a handful of students at the University of Minnesota Medical School approached the family medicine department asking for help reinvigorating the family medicine interest group. Concerned that medical students were gravitating toward specialties that either might pay more or that seemed to have more cachet, the students wanted to raise the specialty’s profile on campus.
With a commitment of ad-ministrative, financial, and faculty support from the department, the students launched a year-long effort to ramp up the group’s activities. They organized lunch-time lectures, skills workshops, and a dinner series in which faculty from different residency programs invited students to their homes for a meal and discussion.
The following year, interest in the interest group itself had grown, and eight students stepped up to lead the group. The new leaders added a book club and community service projects to the interest group’s growing list of activities and, among other things, organized a food, clothing, and toiletries drive; collected journals for overseas medical schools; and developed a health curriculum for homeless children living in a shelter. In June, the group was recognized for its efforts with an excellence award from the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Krista Skorupa, M.D., who served as faculty advisory for the group for three years and now works as medical director of HealthEast’s Roseville Clinic, says she can’t say enough about the students who set out to remake the image of family medicine at the university. “They were dedicated to spreading the word about our wonderful field and engaging the student body in activities that displayed how diverse a field we are,” she says. “More importantly, the student leaders wanted to make sure that their colleagues pursuing other specialties had a broad understanding and respect for the field.”
Fourth-year student Dylan Bindman, who was among the student leaders to step up the interest group’s activities two years ago, says he got involved because he believed students needed to hear about what they could do in family medicine and how much the physicians who are in the specialty love it. “I really feel strongly about family medicine,” he says.
Bindman says he’s concerned about the shortages predicted for all the primary care specialties including family medicine. “We’re not producing enough primary care doctors. For that reason alone, we need to make sure people know about primary care and get them excited about it.”