F E ATU R E S T ORY
AL L T O G ET H E R , N O W Department of Physician Assistant Studies assistant professor Russ Kauffman with PA students at the SMHS Simulation Center.
O, PIONEERS! UND’s trailblazing Department of Physician Assistant Studies celebrates 50 years of improving access to health care in rural communities in the Midwest and beyond. “I was out at Cass Lake [Minnesota] a while ago and fell and
exclusively on rural communities. “We wanted the best way of
lacerated my arm,” recalled Dr. Robert Eelkema. “We went to the
doing it and wanted to get them employed right at the start, sort of
Cass Lake clinic and one of our graduates was there and sewed me
like a deployment strategy.”
up. I felt pretty good about that.” Speaking of a graduate of the Physician Assistant Studies program
“MedEx” program—that would become the SMHS Department of
at UND’s School of Medicine & Health Sciences, the nearly-90-year-
Physicians Assistant Studies, which celebrates its 50th birthday
old Eelkema recalled the anecdote with an almost palpable pride.
this year.
And proud he has every right to be: this physician assistant, or
Ex Nihilo
PA, in rural Minnesota was the product of a program Eelkema had
“Deployment” is the perfect word to use here.
himself brought to North Dakota five decades ago on little more than grit and gumption.
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And so was born in 1970 the program—the Medical Extension or
As Eelkema put it, in the late 1960s and early 1970s many corpsmen with a glut of trauma and other medical experience—
“Our goal was to get people out to provide health care in the
but no medical degree—were returning from Vietnam and looking
boonies quickly,” Eelkema continued of the highly innovative
for work. Many of these former medics were interested in health
program dedicated to producing providers focused almost
careers, but not necessarily medical school.
North Dakota Medicine Fall 2020
