Graduate Medical Education Continues to Improve
June 1, 2016 2:30 pm
According to The Glossary of Education Reform, continuous improvement is a concept that encompasses the general belief that improvement is not something that starts and stops, but it is something that requires an organizational or professional commitment to an ongoing process of learning, self-reflection, adaptation, and growth.
That is exactly what the Graduate Medical Education (GME) program at Magnolia Regional Health Center continues to do.
The program, which initially began training internal medicine residents in 2009, continues to raise the bar on quality and trainee achievements year after year. The program is only one of two Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Internal Medicine programs in the state, with the other being located at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Miss. The ACGME is a private, non-profit, professional organization responsible for the accreditation of approximately 700 institutions that sponsor approximately 9,600 residency and fellowship programs in the United States.
MRHC’s GME program was the first program nationally to go from American Osteopathic Association (AOA) accreditation to ACGME accreditation, which allows MRHC to begin training MD credentialed physicians in addition to DO credentialed physicians. The program’s resident physicians recently took the national Internal Medicine In Service Exam and were ranked 5th overall and in the top 4% nationally. Both of these were up from the previous year’s ranking of being in the top 12% nationally, and the first-attempt pass rate on the national Internal Medicine Board Exam increased from 95% to 96.2% this year, with 26 out of 27 students passing the exam.
Dr. David Pizzimenti, MRHC Chair of Graduate Medical Education and Internal Medicine Residency Program Director, has done his share of receiving accolades too. Pizzimenti was named the 2015 American College of Osteopathic Internists “Teacher of the Year”. Each year, the ACOI, an organization whose mission is to advance the practice of osteopathic internal medicine, honors members of the College who have distinguished themselves in the areas of teaching, research, and patient care. Recently, while completing his ten year recertification, he received the top score in the country. During his time here, the program has steadily gained interest from residents and students around the country and offered the same training other large teaching/research hospitals have.
“This program is accomplishing great things and offering students and residents a location they can gain quality experience and training,” said Dr. Pizzimenti. “For being a medical education program at a smaller hospital, we are not just competing with much larger academic hospitals in larger cities, but we are beating them in academic success and quality of care.”
MRHC has come a long way from just hiring great physicians. They are now training and growing them here too. Several of the students who go through the program have come back to practice medicine right here in Corinth, and others are continuously getting into great fellowships around the country in various specialties. The below are just a few:
· Aaron Earles – One of our First CORE Medical Student Graduates and First Internal Medicine Graduates (Back as Interventional Cardiologist)
· Andy Holley – Was a Core Medical Student at Magnolia Regional Health Center (Back as General Surgeon)
· Amanda Finley – Internal Medicine Graduate (Now associate clinical professor)
· Delali Blavo – Internal Medicine Graduate (Will begin practicing Endocrinology in August)
· Rachel Thibodeaux – Internal Medicine Graduate (Now associate clinical professor)
· Valerie Norton – Internal Medicine Graduate (Back as Internal Medicine Physician)
· Charles Swanson – Internal Medicine Graduate (Now Internal Medicine Physician in Tippah County)
· Seger Morris – Internal Medicine Graduate (Now associate clinical professor)
· Matthew Tipton – Internal Medicine Graduate (Now Emergency Medicine Physician at Tippah County Hospital)
· Michael Hawley – (Now associate clinical professor)
· Ashley Nickerson – Cardiology Graduate (Coming back in August)
· Andrew Thibodeaux – Cardiology Graduate in August (Will start as faculty in August)
· Beth Lindsey – Graduating in 2016; is on stipend and will return for Rheumatology
· Leah McIntosh – Graduating in 2016; is on stipend and will return for Nephrology
· Peyton Preece – Graduating in 2016 (Will begin July 18th as associate clinical professor)
Gena Lindsey, the Designated Institutional Official for Graduate Medical Education at Magnolia Regional Health Center, praises Dr. Pizzimenti, the Associate Clinical Professors of internal medicine and the Medical Staff for the phenomenal medical education the trainees receive at MRHC. “Our highly structured and academically rigorous program, led by Dr. Pizzimenti, allows a small Mississippi teaching hospital to have the ability to produce some of the most experienced and highest board scoring physicians in the nation.”
Ms. Lindsey acknowledged the program would not be the success it is today without the support and resources provided by Magnolia Regional Health Center. “We take great pride training physicians for our rural, medically underserved area, in a state of the art facility”. “I am extremely appreciative of the support and resources the executive staff and board of trustees have provided since we started our program(s), and I anxiously look forward to what the future may hold.”
This post was written by Magnolia Regional Health Center
