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Wright Center partner receives grant to help ready medical students for residency programs
Fourth-year medical students at A.T. Still University – School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona participate in a residency readiness boot camp.
A.T. Still University – School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona (ATSU-SOMA), a longtime partner of The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education, is one of five colleges to receive a grant from the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM) to support a residency readiness boot camp for fourth-year medical students.
The Wright Center for Community Health has been a training and educational site for ATSU-SOMA since 2020. Today, The Wright Center hosts about 25 second- through fourth-year medical school students from ATSU-SOMA who are completing their education in our clinical learning environments in Northeast Pennsylvania.
ATSU-SOMA launched a residency readiness boot camp in 2021, according to Dr. Christina Weaver, assistant dean of clinical curriculum, interprofessional education, and simulation at ATSU-SOMA. Students participate in a three-day, immersive training – complete with mock hospital rooms full of equipment – at a hotel near campus in Mesa, Arizona, to better understand the challenges they’ll face in their medical residency. Eight ATSU-SOMA students currently training at The Wright Center will return to the Mesa campus for the boot camp this spring.
“We started this during the COVID-19 pandemic because our students weren’t able to fully participate in clinical experiences right before graduation,” Dr. Weaver said. “Our goal was to bring them some training opportunities, walk them through some procedures, and help boost their confidence as they take the next step to residency.”
The Wright Center was one of the few training sites that remained open for ATSU-SOMA students during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Dr. Erin McFadden, The Wright Center’s co-regional director of medical education for ATSU-SOMA and director for undergraduate medical and interprofessional education.
“There’s a lot about being a physician that students can’t learn in medical school,” said Dr. McFadden, outlining the benefits. “Having a boot camp helps prepare students for what they’ll encounter as a resident, especially in a hospital setting, from how to order IV fluids to what do if a patient’s heart stops.”
Dr. Erin McFadden
Finding ways to better prepare their medical students for residency led ATSU-SOMA to develop Althea, an artificial intelligence-powered “Nurse Chatbot” that simulates encounters a resident can have while on call.
“The AI nurse will page a student and relate, for instance, that Mr. Jones in Room 103 is complaining of pain,” similar to a message a medical resident might receive while on call, Dr. Weaver said. “Then the student replies, and the AI nurse is conversational via text regarding the patient’s condition, all based on the information we feed it.”
A recent ATSU-SOMA graduate, Dr. Connor Yost, developed the AI chatbot along with Dr. Weaver and Dr. Nicholas Caputo, an ATSU-SOMA faculty member, to help medical students practice a specialized skill before entering residency. The $10,000 AACOM grant will support this new technology, which Dr. Weaver says has the potential for other medical schools to use as well.
Before launching the grant, AACOM officials visited ATSU-SOMA to learn more about their residency boot camp, she added. Like ATSU-SOMA, AACOM and other colleges of osteopathic medicine recognized how the COVID-19 pandemic affected medical students. In 2022, AACOM established a task force to address critical issues affecting osteopathic medical education, including the transition to residency and residency readiness.
The Task Force’s Boot Camp Action Group developed the Residency Readiness Playbook to guide colleges in building residency readiness boot camps to better prepare fourth-year students for the demands of residency. The playbook identifies critical residency skills and guides the framework’s integration into existing or new capstone activities. Other colleges that received the AACOM grant are Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine, Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine, Kansas City University College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.
In addition to training hundreds of resident and fellow physicians from around the world, The Wright Centers for Graduate Medical Education and Community Health host interprofessional learners in a variety of health care fields, including medical students, medical assistants, physician assistants, dentists, and more, to support family-sustaining careers in health care and to meet the region’s needs for primary health services. For more information, go to TheWrightCenter.org.
To learn more about ATSU-SOMA’s residency readiness boot camp and Dr. Weaver, check out the video.
