Illinois Medicine

2014 Summer

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The College of Medicine's Peoria campus has provided medical education, research and healthcare collaboration to central Illinois for the past 40 years. The campus has experienced a number of exciting developments in the past few years, and Regional Dean Sara L. Rusch, MD, MACP, shared her thoughts about a few of them with illinois Medicine. How would you define the mission of the College of Medicine at Peoria campus as it serves the needs of central Illinois, and as part of the broader COM mission? the uicoMP mission is "lead collaboration to improve health." uicoMP combines its resources and assets with those of our community to develop programs through collaboration. We improve health through teaching students, residents and practicing physicians; we improve health through community service and patient care; and we improve health through research. this successful approach has established central illinois as a premier health care destination. Why do you stress the word "collaboration"? our campus is structured differently than some of our sister campuses. While we have 170 core faculty, we have more than 1,100 additional faculty who are volunteer. instead of a traditional university hospital, we work in close collaboration with our two major academic medical centers, osf saint francis Medical center and unityPoint health-Methodist, which together provide the clinical environment where we teach our medical students and nearly 270 residents in 11 residencies and nine fellowships. together these two hospitals have almost 900 beds, all within six blocks of campus. by working together, we are able to accomplish goals that none of us could do alone. How has the Jump Trading Simulation and Education Center impacted the Peoria campus and the surrounding community? Jump is an example of the collaboration we've just spoken about. this world-class 67,000-square- foot simulation and education center is transforming the medical education our students and residents are receiving, with opportunities simply not available at many medical schools. our faculty are developing new curricula using simulation to train students how best to work in healthcare teams across all professions, as they would in real-world situations; our physicians are working with bioengineers to build new medical simulation devices to improve medical training, such as learning ultrasound or placing a bone catheter; and we are using these educational moments for research purposes, so that we all may learn the best practices. What does the Peoria campus' ranking of 11th nationwide in producing primary care physicians, according to Academic Medicine, say about the campus? to me, this ranking says we are accomplishing what this campus was created to do — increasing the number of physicians for rural and downstate illinois. More than 60 percent of the primary care providers in our community trained in Peoria. the Academic Medicine article (vol. 88, no. 9, september 2013) examined 161 teaching institutions and ranked uicoMP as the 11th most effective educator of primary care residents in the country. this is vital, especially when taking into consideration an anticipated shortage of 124,000 physicians by 2025, with about 46,000 of them being physicians in primary care. What will the new Gibbs Scholarship (see page 8) enable the COMP campus to do? Dr. Gibbs was an early advocate for creating regional campuses. he practiced in a rural community his entire career — first in primary care and then as a general surgeon. his gift provides a scholarship for a medical student interested in practicing in a rural community. his gift is one portion of a campus-wide effort to train interested medical students and residents in how to practice in rural communities. Q A 5 QUeStiOnS 1 2 3 4 5 P h o t o : l l o y D D e G R a n e

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