Morehead State University, St. Claire Regional Medical Center and the University of Kentucky Tuesday announced a new program through the UK’s College of Medicine which aims to recruit, train and retain future physicians in the state's medical underserved rural areas through the creation of regional medical school sites at Morehead and Murray.
“The prospect of training medical students in our joint health education facility is very exciting,” said MSU President Wayne D. Andrews. “This decision by UK will have a far reaching, positive impact on East Kentucky's health care future.”
Morehead’s site is scheduled to open in 2010 and Murray’s in 2012.
The Rural Physician Leadership Track is part of a plan by the College of Medicine to increase class size by nearly 30 percent over the next several years. Ten students will be recruited for the program each year in 2008 and 2009, raising first-year enrollment from 103 to 113.
After completing their first two years of medical school at UK's main campus, students will spend their third and fourth years at the Morehead site, which will work in cooperation with St. Claire Regional Medical Center to provide hands-on medical training.
With the addition to the new program, anew $28 million health sciences building near Second Street will be constructed. The 92,500-square foot facility will house MSU's departments of nursing and imaging sciences, UK's physician assistant and family nurse practitioner programs, in addition to a freestanding primary care clinic, and comprehensive health education center. >>
Center for Health Education and Research
“This three-way partnership makes sense for the taxpayers of Kentucky and for each of our respective institutions. We (MSU) needed more space for educating health care professionals and St. Claire needed more space for diagnosing and treating patients,” said Dr. Andrews.
“Today’s announcement is the icing on the cake. A regional site of the UK College of Medicine that is dedicated to training rural physicians will literally change the face of medical education in this state and bring even greater credibility and prestige to health sciences programs at Morehead State.”
The clinic will serve as the primary training site for the SCR/UK family practice residency program and will include examination rooms, a dental suite, as well as provide for a clinical laboratory and basic radiology services.
The comprehensive health education center will be designed to accommodate a wide range of continuing education/workshop programs, teleconferencing and tele-medicine initiatives, specialized professional development/enrichment opportunities for health-care providers, and rural health research activities.
The space for MSU's departments of nursing and imaging sciences would include lecture and laboratory classrooms to support the associate and baccalaureate degree nursing programs, the radiologic technology program, and the sonography, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance program options. Also included would be faculty/staff offices and conference areas.
Additionally, space will be provided for anticipated growth in these programs and the planned implementation of MSU's new master's degrees in nursing and in nuclear medicine. Similar space will be available to support UK's master's-level programs for physician assistant and family nurse practitioner.
Groundbreaking is scheduled for later this summer.