February 27, 1997
U.S. News ranks UW as top primary-care medical school for fourth consecutive year.
The University of Washington School of Medicine continues to rank as the nation’s top primary-care medical school in U.S. News and World Report annual survey of graduate and professional schools.
“The steady ranking reflects the medical school’s responsiveness to the region’s need for primary-care physicians,” said Dr. John Coombs, acting vice president for medical affairs and acting dean of the School of Medicine. “We are constantly building on our solid primary-care training programs. We launch new initiatives that we believe will best prepare physicians for changes in the health-care system and advances in treatment expected at the turn of the century.”
“A major emphasis of our primary-care training programs,” Coombs said, “is to interest medical students in practicing in rural areas, central city neighborhoods or with medically underserved populations, such as the uninsured. Our strength as a medical school is in improving physician distribution in sparsely settled geographical areas and among populations lacking adequate medical care. Physicians already practicing in these areas play a vital role in teaching our students, and, by immersing a student in the day-to-day aspects of their work, may inspire future doctors to emulate them.”
Community training experiences with physicians throughout a multi-state region are the most rapidly expanding component of the UW’s medical student programs. According to Dr. D. Daniel Hunt, associate dean for academic affairs and director of the WAMI (Washington, Alaska, Montana and Idaho) Program of regionalized medical education, these experiences are preparing future doctors for societal changes: managed care networks, an aging population, the growing ethnic diversity in the region, and the continuing need for physicians to serve small towns, inner cities and people overlooked by the health-care system.
Among the newest training options for medical students is a six-month placement with a rural doctor, Hunt said. Pilot tested this year in two Idaho towns, Hailey and McCall, the program will expand to additional sites. Another recent effort is an invitation extended to newly admitted students to spend one or two days observing a doctor in a medically underserved setting.
The UW’s success in primary-care training is the result of excellent teaching conducted by specialists and biomedical scientists, as well as by primary-care physicians. Graduates who enter primary-care practices do so with a solid, rigorous grounding that enables them to meet the varied demands of primary care, particularly in isolated rural areas where they must handle emergency and complex cases. UW medical students also receive training in interpreting the validity of research findings, and in the ethical and patient-care implications of emerging scientific developments, such as the discovery of genes for a variety of conditions.
“While it is unusual for a medical school to emphasize both biomedical research and primary-care training,” Coombs said, “we believe that our students who enter primary-care fields benefit from training at a school where knowledge is advanced through scientific research and interpreted in a broader social context.”
In the March 10 issue of U.S.News & World Report, appearing March 3, the UW also ranked 13th among research-oriented medical schools. Harvard University was named the nation’s best research-oriented medical school. In fiscal year 1996, Harvard, a private university, was the only medical school to receive more National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding than the UW, a public institution. The UW is second in NIH research funding in the nation. The UW also is one of the nation’s top ten universities in technology transfer, the bringing of new inventions and biomedical products into the regional and national economy.
In addition to rating medical schools generally, the survey also measured reputations in teaching specific disciplines. The University of Washington School of Medicine ranked No. 1 in family medicine, No. 1 in rural medicine, No. 3 in women’s health care, No. 5 in internal medicine, No. 5 in pediatrics and No. 5 in geriatrics. It ranked in the top five in six of the eight specialty categories.
The UW medical school has ranked No. 1 in rural medicine for the past six years. Family medicine has been ranked for the past four years; each of these years the University of Washington School of Medicine has ranked No. 1. In a previous survey category, no longer used because it was replaced by family medicine, the UW medical school ranked No. 1 for two years (1992 and 1993) in community-based medicine.
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