RPLP 10 YEARS LATER: HOW UK’S RURAL MEDICAL TRAINING PROGRAM IS HELPING THE COMMONWEALTH 16 | UKMedicine
Ten years ago, the UK College of Medicine recruited four of its second-year medical students for an educational experiment. With a goal of preparing more physicians to practice in the rural areas of the Commonwealth and beyond, the college asked these students to immerse themselves in small-town Kentucky, learning rural medicine onsite at a rural medical campus in Morehead. The experiment was not only successful, but also built the foundation for what has evolved into a cutting-edge program helping address the physician shortage in Kentucky. Those four individuals – Ilva Iriarte, MD; Larissa Kern, MD; Chadwick Knight, MD; and Sarah Tibbs, MD – made up the first graduating class of what is now called the Rural Physician Leadership Program. Since its first year, the program’s graduating class tripled in size, and the program continues to graduate 12-14 medical students each spring who are equipped to practice medicine in small communities that need health care. “The idea behind the original program truly has worked, that if you take students from rural communities and train them to be physicians, they want to go back and practice in those rural communities,” Rebecca Todd, MD, assistant dean for RPLP, said.
