CARIBOU, Maine — Two Portland med students are about to experience Aroostook County culture as they enter a nine-month Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship at Cary Medical Center in Caribou.
Tristen Ripley, MS III and Jennifer Bergeron MS II of the Tufts University School of Medicine Maine Medical Center (TUSM-MMC) Program will begin working with physicians at Cary this month.
Cary was able to meet the requirements for participation in the training program, which include clinical programs ranging from pediatrics, general surgery, obstetrics, gynecology, family practice, and internal medicine.
According to Dr. Regen Gallagher, Cary Medical Center will provide housing for the students, as it is a requirement for the program, along with physician leadership and administrative support.
Carl Flynn M.D., who has upwards of two decades experience as a family medicine physician at both Cary and Pines, will serve as the program’s director. He cites staff enthusiasm as a crucial aspect of the program’s fruition in The County.
Flynn says the Portland students will get to experience a form of medical care that involves more bonding between doctors and patients, since the northern Maine community is significantly smaller.
“I always tell students that this community, and by that I mean Aroostook County and even most of the state, is a bit of a throwback to the old days,” Flynn said. “Patients value your opinion; they don’t come in to get your opinion, then walk out to hear from someone else and do a straw poll at the end of the day to see which opinion they like, which is what happens in a lot of American health care now.”
The doctor related his own experiences at Cary to elaborate.
“The longer I’m here the harder it is to break bad news to my patients,” Flynn said, “because they’re no longer my patients but my friends. I golf with them, I coach their kids in hockey, and we sit on boards together. Out of the thousand patients I have, I’d say half of them have my cell phone number. There’s a bonding in rural Maine that you don’t necessarily see in Portland, and you definitely don’t see it in Boston. We use the same medicine and make the same diagnoses, but the bond with the patients is different here. I think that’s something these students are going to get.”
Cary CEO Kris Doody added that, since Cary is located in a rural area, the bond between staff and the two students will be greater as well.
“If you walk through a hospital in Boston,” said Doody, “you see many interns, residents, and fellows. At Cary Medical Center, these two will be our students, and they will be something special to us as opposed to just one of many interns.”
The TUSM-MMIC program’s third year Longitudinal Integrated Internship has placed Maine Track students in both rural and urban locations within the state since 2011. One stipulation is that students can not participate in a facility close to their home. This allows them to experience the culture of a new region while simultaneously developing continuing learning relationships with patients’ clinicians and meeting the majority of the year’s core clinical competencies across multiple disciplines.
