Physician, Educator, 研究er: Medical Students Do It All
Idaho WWAMI’s 研究 Symposium Shines a Light on Super-star Medical Students
医学院很难. Students eat, sleep and breathe the medical industry, their education and all things healthcare.
Physicians aren’t limited to doctors providing clinical care. They’re researchers and educators making a difference in the lives of their patients, 还有病人的亲人.
As a part of the Independent Investigative Inquiry research component of the curriculum at Idaho WWAMI, students are required to complete a summer research project, 通常是研究一个临床问题, 或者完成一篇文献综述. They present their findings during a public poster session.
Idaho WWAMI’s annual research symposium provides an opportunity for their medical students to highlight their summer research and illustrate how the findings matter in a clinical and community setting.
克里斯蒂娜Nolde, who was selected as the awardee of the Outstanding Scholarship of Discovery Oral Presentation and received Honorable Mention in the Outstanding Scholarship of Discovery poster category, spent her summer studying autoimmune disease and the association with adverse pregnancy outcomes.
Nolde和她的团队做了一项回顾性研究, looking at women who’d delivered children within the University of Washington system from 2003 to 2023. 在此基础上，他们评估了服用药物的女性 biologic medications — medications made from biological sources instead of chemically synthesized ——以及那些没有的人. They investigated the effect of those medications — in this case, medications used to combat autoimmune diseases — on adverse pregnancy outcomes.
“这真的很令人兴奋, 这是我没想到的, was that there was actually no difference in adverse pregnancy outcomes between women taking biologic medications and those who weren’t,诺尔德说. “Which is great news because a lot of women who are pregnant or going through pregnancy episodes will stop their medications because we really don’t know what those medications do in terms of pregnancy outcomes.”
Nolde said that she hopes that her research can be put into clinical practice and provide real-life education for women.
As Idaho WWAMI continues to grow and students continue to perform research with real-life impacts, the Idaho Office of Underserved and Rural Medical 研究 (IOURMR), 爱达荷州WWAMI研究办公室, 继续和它一起成长.
近年来, IOURMR has expanded the research opportunities available to students, 现在他们有机会做额外的, 完全可选, research project during the traditional academic year and over the course of the summer.
One of the options pioneered at the University of Idaho is the hybrid Scholarship of Discovery Rural Underserved Opportunities Program (RUOP) experience. If students elect to take on the additional hybrid RUOP research opportunity, they will spend several weeks in a medically underserved community in Idaho while working with the IOURMR team to complete an original Scholarship of Discovery research project relevant to Idaho’s rural communities.
This program was piloted two years ago with a single Idaho WWAMI student in Orofino. In 2023, 17 students chose to do the extra work to complete this hybrid research option in addition to completing their four-week immersive clinical experience in an Idaho community as part of the RUOP.
“医学院很难。. 罗素·贝克，IOURMR医学研究主任. “Students are here all the time training to become physicians. For them to sacrifice their limited free time to participate in non-required research projects to become better physicians, researchers and stewards of our knowledge so that they can serve others, 这个决定有多无私?”
The 研究 Symposium is a chance for Idaho WWAMI students to get recognition for taking on more than what was expected of them, and to show off what they learned about the needs of the state they will be serving down the line.
“Those of you who are here in the white coats, it is an honor, truly, to work with you,” Baker said. “To know that I come to work every day to work with you to have a small benefit on who you are as you prepare to spend 40 years serving others in our state, one day taking care of my children and my grandchildren, 谢谢你！.”
