MARQUETTE — Medical students from the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine Upper Peninsula Campus/Region receive firsthand experience practicing rural family medicine alongside area physicians during their four-week Rural Family Medicine rotation. This selective gives medical students an opportunity to live in the community they are learning in and experience what it is like to live in a small town.

The MSU College of Human Medicine UP Campus is one of eight community campuses across the state providing clinical training for medical students. The UP campus offers a community based, mission-focused curriculum to fulfill the Leadership in Rural Medicine certificate, one of three community campuses in the LRM program, and the only to offer the Rural Physician Program certificate.

Clinical training sites are in communities across the Upper Peninsula with core clerk-ships primarily at UP Health System – Marquette. Fourth-year medical students Joshua Cole and Sarah Teising recently completed their rural family medicine rotations in Houghton/Hancock and L’Anse. As part of their requirement, they conducted research and presented their data to the UP-Campus audience about the communities in which they served. Their statistics and information included community, population, demographics, service groups, recreational activity opportunities, types of available education, and prevalent community health issues in the respective communities. Their community involvements and research help illustrate what contributes to a community’s overall health.

The Rural Physician Program aims to provide clinical options for students whose goals include serving people in small towns and rural communities. Students in the program complete two years of clinical training at MSU College of Human Medicine campuses in either Lansing or Grand Rapids before coming to the UP Campus for their third and fourth years of training.

Students and their training faculty in the Rural Family Medicine rotations include:

— Tyler Janish – Aspirus Laurium Clinic with Dawn Lee, D.O. and Aspirus Lake Linden Clinic with Shannon Handler, FNP.

— Alex Lucas – Upper Great Lake Family Health Center (UGLFHC), Houghton with Zachariah DeYoung, M.D.

— Erin McKenzie – Upper Great Lake Family Health Center (UGLFHC), Houghton and Lake Linden with Karen DeYoung, D.O. (Houghton) and Tom McConnon, M.D. (Lake Linden).

— John Mroz – Aspirus Houghton Clinic with Marilynn Dewald, M.D., and Aspirus Laurium Clinic with Dawn Lee, D.O.

— Sara Teising – BCMH Physicians Group, L’Anse with Todd Ingram M.D., Craig Vickstrom M.D., Jeff Sweers M.D., Abigail Prentice M.D.

“We are grateful for the community hospitals and providers that continuously welcome our students into their facilities and communities,” said Susan Tincknell, Student Pro-grams Administrator for UP Clinical Campus. “This rural rotation is the hallmark of the UP Campus and students look forward to this rewarding experience.”

Currently, 319 medical students have graduated from the MSU College of Human Medicine UP Campus. As part of the Leadership in Rural Medicine, the UP Campus Rural Physician Program has made significant impact on the rural physician workforce of our region. Nearly thirty percent of our graduates have practiced in the Upper Peninsula, helping us achieve our mission to educate medical students to become competent and compassionate physicians, skilled to care for the citizens of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.