Wow. Well, I can understand everyone's concern. Medical school is a big step, and one none of us have taken lightly. I'm a WVSOM student and a West Virginian; though I am older, and I've lived outside the state for many years and have attended many different types of universities, from large to small, public to private, top 10 to non-ranked.
WVSOM was a choice I made because I felt the current of the river was leading me there and I would have had to fight it to end up elsewhere. At that time, I hoped it was a good decision.
But things are changing drastically at WVSOM. The small institution that was the pride-and-joy of DO's in WV and elsewhere has started to alienate many graduates. I am currently on rotations at a hospital in WV with a WVSOM grad from back in the 80's. He is an amazing physician. He is a perfect preceptor in every sense of the word - from his eccentricities, to the hours he spends explaining procedures and patient care to me and the other students. In my opinion, he represents everything that WVSOM can be and was, and hopefully will be in the future.
I would like to take the time to state a few issues I think all prospective students should be aware of before applying and/or choosing a curricular track. These issues are complex, thus my comments are long.
1) WVSOM has recently doubled its enrollment. I had a professor tell me the first week of school after this size increase that administration continued to tell them all spring there would only be 130 students in the class of 2010. Then in July they said "well, 160". But he said that he knew as soon as he saw the completed lecture hall that they were going to fill every single one of those seats; which he found out for sure on the first day of orientation for 2010. The fact is that our president (now retiring) is a businessman and the school has begun to be run like a business. I generally do not think this is a problem if you view your students as customers, your professors as employees, and most importantly your product as a high-quality osteopathic education. The problem is that without a clear and concise mission from the President and Board of Governors to provide that high-quality education on every level, people lose site of the goal; people lose sight of the teamwork it takes to put 100-200 well-qualified doctors out into residency. So in spite of the fact that we have some AMAZING professors (especially in pharmacology, anatomy, neuro/psych and physio), no one is providing the funds to back up the students once they go out on years 3 and 4, and also, bad seeds (professors mired in the academic mud of day-to-day work who cannot see a goal beyond their next paycheck) are allowed to poison what would otherwise be a/n completely and impeccably amazing experience.
a) One has to ask how much respect the administration has for its professors when they cannot even be honest about how many students they will be teaching in August. The professors have to plan their semester out, etc. (I won't restate more of the obvious). I have talked with professors who feel frustrated, burned out and under-appreciated. This can lead to job dissatisfaction amongst the faculty, which translates into poorer lectures and professor-student interaction. Long-term this can be remedied, but in the fast-pace of medical education, several classes of students can go down as casualties in the meantime.
b) The doubling of enrollment has put a huge stress on the clinical rotation sites. I watched 14 of my classmates be sent to Logan Hospital. Logan barely has 14 doctors at all. I have no doubt that although ER will be exciting there, those students will receive an education very different in quality from one that WVU or Marshall (or other WVSOM sites) would provide. Furthermore, several of the doctors (WVSOM grads) in my area are so upset about the increased enrollment that they decided they will no longer take students, even though they love teaching. Although I think this is the wrong way to go about getting your message across to administration that you disagree with their new policies (it only further hurts the students), it has created a real problem in terms of placing students with a preceptor. My friend did not find out until 1 business day before her rotation whom her preceptor would be or WHERE that doctor would be located (a real problem when you were told months prior to secure housing for yourself at a specific site). Furthermore, add this to the fact that WVSOM does not pay any of the preceptors for taking students in their fourth year, and only pays for base site rotations in the third year (and this pay is comparably low). This had not been much of an issue in the past because WVSOM was the main school sending students to many of these doctors in WV and those doctors were big supporters of WVSOM. However, VCOM has now established a residency program in Bluefield, WV (we still don't have a residency program after 30+ years) and has begun to reach further into WV for preceptors to educate their 3rd and 4th year students. Guess what? VCOM pays their preceptors very well. One WVSOM grad here has said they are seriously considering signing on with VCOM after discontinuing relations with WVSOM Clin Ed over disappointment in quality of pre-clinical education (yes, that's just one, but that's 10-12 rotations in one year that will be unavailable to WVSOM students). Money certainly is an unfortunate thing to whittle this issue down to, but I think many professionals see money as a measure of respect for their time. It simply adds an hour or two to a physician's day when they have a student in their office. How does a physician justify that to his wife or child at the end of the day after years and years? Perhaps it could be remedied without money. Unfortunately, I have been told these preceptors rarely receive our required evaluations of them and Clin Ed almost never makes a visit or a phone call to say "thank you", etc. I personally have had wonderful interactions with the Clin Ed staff, and if anything, I see this as a larger institutional policy and identity issue than something reflective of individuals in the dept.
2) As an aside to #1, I have to ask why the school has decided to pump money into new buildings (many of the newest we really don't need) instead of securing the quality of their student's education first. Growth has a place, but it is best accomplished with a healthy base.
3) WVSOM's out of state tuition has become VERY high. I believe that they are dooming our rank in US News and World Report by doing this. What is the biggest reason grads state for choosing a specialty over primary care when they have an interest in both?? Debt. If they can't pay off their $175 - $225,000 loans, how can they chose rural family practice?? I believe these changes (presumably to finance all the new buildings on campus) are short-sited. Also, I don't want to be the cynic (and honestly, I am considering family practice), but who are the other people who go into family practice? The ones who can't get in to anything else. You really have to wonder how much of our number is made up of those people. The other blogger was correct - our avg MCAT was a 21. That is absolutely pathetic as an average.
b) WV is a relatively poor state. If they really want WV residents to stay here and practice, they should consider developing a high-quality residency program and lowering tuition. It's painful to get the notice of a tuition increase in your mailbox every year when you see these new buildings being built that you will never get to use.
4) PBL vs SBL. I am going to get nailed by a small percentage of my classmates for this, but simply, PBL broke DOWN for us. There is no safety net to catch the slackers - and there will always be slackers. It's hard when you get two slackers in your group of 7 or 8 and they have the ability to dictate the learning issues for the group (medicine seems to attract some people who like to play politics instead of study). There were also some atrocities regarding our exams that were enough to make most of our class want to walk out the door and never return. Studying 14 hours a day is hard enough, but walk through the door to take an exam that represents almost NOTHING you were "supposed" to have studied is absolutely heartbreaking. We were so upset, that Dr. M didn't know what to do with us, so he just stopped talking to us all together. Now I have spoken with at least 12 of my classmates and all of them have passed COMLEX1. I think it is quite possible that we will have a +90% PBL first time pass rate. Compare this with the 70% FIRST TIME pass rate from PBL last year - a big change from a class whom was basically written off by our administrators as being trouble-makers (whilst the previous was toted as being the model of PBL). I like to think the class under us has had a much more positive experience with PBL than I did partly because of all the work we put into guiding them. A manual was written by our class to guide them through the process, and many of us urged them to push through the basic sciences before moving on to pathology, pharm, etc. This info was not provided to us. In many ways, I think our class just slipped through the cracks. We were trouble because our class required so many changes and inconvenienced so many. It is just unfortunate.
All in all, I think things will get better. I think our classes' experience was a low point for the school. However, it is very possible that the 3rd and 4th clinical years will continue to be a problem for the school until it realigns some of it's focus on the quality of education rather than the expansion of the school (the hot trend with DO schools today). Change always takes restructuring and reorganizing, and chaos (even a little) is hard to avoid. I just regret that the chaos had to hit my personal medical education so hard. I feel I am capable of much more and would have preferred to spend the hundreds of hours I did wading through the maze of curriculum and policy on my studies and learning the basis of medicine. (Also, if you are a non-traditional student, I highly suggest the SBL track - it will the best job to ensure that you have all of your bases covered.)
I have learned something that I had a hard time accepting at first: 1) When it comes down to it, everyone looks out for themselves first and you have to too. 2) As a friend said to me a few weeks ago: "You don't have to fall on that sword. This is not ancient Japan and no one is going to respect you for being a martyr here."
And now, I'm going to catch some sleep so I can do a great job at the hospital tomorrow.
Best of luck to you all no matter where your paths lead you.🙄
BTW - Lewisburg IS an amazing town.
