Making primary care primary
Primary Care Week brings students and employers together at UND
Each fall, the University of North Dakota (UND) School of Medicine & Health Sciences (SMHS) is buzzing for two hours with chatter, excitement, and connection during its annual Community Meet and Greet.
This year’s event took place on Oct. 28 and attracted 190 UND students and 28 employers from the state and region. The Meet and Greet is held in conjunction with Primary Care Week, an annual event led by the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) that highlights the importance of primary care and raises awareness of its role in healthcare.
Co-hosted each year by the UND Center for Rural Health, this year’s event organizers were Brooke Miller and Camryn Schall, second-year UND medical students and the leaders of AMSA at North Dakota’s only medical education program. “The Community Meet and Greet is super important for students,” Schall said. “It’s where they can network and build relationships with different people from around North Dakota. You really see how supportive everyone is and how much they want you to stay here in the state.”
Miller added that events like the Meet and Greet help students learn what employment options there are in North Dakota. “There were a lot of organizations I’d never heard of before, and just going up and talking to everyone who was at each booth,” she said. “They’re so genuinely excited for you to potentially be interested in them. You can tell they want you to come work for them in the future.”
One of the 28 employers in attendance was Heart of America Medical Center (HAMC) of Rugby, N.D. Sara Radomski, human resources manager for HAMC, has attended UND’s Meet and Greet for the past four years.
Her favorite aspect of the event is seeing repeat students and connecting with them year after year. “Today I talked with students I saw at an event here in the spring and it’s nice to catch up and continue to interact with them again,” she said.
Radomski noted that students she met from this event in the past have come to Rugby for training and job shadowing, and the continuous presence of her organization is both a marketing and recruitment strategy. “We are a town of 2,500 people competing with all the big healthcare employers in the region. It’s important that students know where HAMC is, and where Rugby is,” she said.
Coming back to meet with students regularly is beneficial to Radomski’s organization. “It’s important to keep our name out there so students know we are an option for them,” she added.
The event isn’t only for medical students, of course. Cindy Flom-Meland, professor and chair of the UND Department of Physical Therapy (PT), noted how almost 30 of the 190 student attendees of the event this year were from the PT program. Flom-Meland prioritizes this event for her students so they can interact with future clinical training sites.
“The Meet and Greet gives our students a great opportunity to meet people from our clinical partners,” Flom-Meland shared. “It gives students an opportunity to start networking and be able to understand what it means to build relationships with potential employers. It is a great resource for them.”
Additionally, the event allows program faculty to thank their clinical partners in person.
“We are reliant on our clinical partners for the clinical education experiences that our students do in the summer of year one, and all of year three,” said Flom-Meland. “Without them, that training doesn’t exist. This gives us an opportunity to tell them face-to-face ‘thank you for supporting our students and our program.’”
The remainder of Primary Care Week events included a Summer Opportunities session to discuss options for research or clinical experiences for first-year medical students, a skills lab hosted by the Family Medicine and Ob/Gyn Interest Groups, a primary care resident panel, and a stipend and scholarship support breakfast provided by the North Dakota Area Health Education Center.
