UND medical school ranks high in family physicians
GRAND FORKS, N.D. - The UND medical school ranks fourth in the nation in producing family medicine doctors, a new study says.
However, most of those doctors leave the state.
About 17 percent of UND medical school graduates specialize in family practice, compared with about 8 percent at medical schools nationwide, according to the study done by the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Family practice is among the lowest-paying medical specialties, making it increasingly unpopular among medical students with high student loan debt, said H. David Wilson, dean of UND's School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
“Family practice is very demanding, especially in rural areas,” he said. “It's a lot of responsibility and long hours and a lot of nights on call, but it’s at the bottom of the heap in terms of remuneration.”
Wilson said UND's Rural Opportunities in Medical Education program exposes medical students to family practice by placing them with rural family physicians and in other internship programs.
“The negatives for family physicians are outweighed by the satisfaction of getting to know generations of a family and watching the maturation of young children from infants to adolescents and adults,” Wilson said. “That's extremely rewarding.”
Despite UND's success at training family physicians, the school still struggles to keep those doctors in North Dakota.
Out of 62 medical school graduates this year, 11 went into family medicine, Wilson said, but only four of those students took jobs in North Dakota.
“We take enormous pride in the number of family physicians we produce, but that only partially addresses the rural-urban issue,” said Joshua Wynne, the medical school's executive associate dean.