We are disheartened that the Idaho legislature is considering House Bill 176 which seeks to defund Idaho WWAMI. The University of Washington School of Medicine has partnered with the State of Idaho, the University of Idaho and local doctors across the State for 53 years to provide Idaho with a nationally respected public medical school. This successful partnership has resulted in hundreds of medical school graduates and tens of thousands of Idaho patients receiving high-quality medical care.
Idaho WWAMI started in 1972 accepting 10 students per year and with one clinical rotation site for third- and fourth-year students to get hands-on training. Over time, Idaho WWAMI grew to 40 students per year (beginning with the entering class of 2016), and today Idaho WWAMI provides 252 required clinical clerkships across the state. UW School of Medicine clinical faculty in Idaho provide the clinical teaching for these required clerkships, many of whom are WWAMI alumni.
This network has been built through partnership and hard work. We will always look to expand medical education opportunities when we have both the classroom infrastructure and clinical rotations available to teach our students. Development of new clinical training sites requires finding physicians willing to take additional time to teach medical students. We actively pursue additional clerkship opportunities, and when we find more doctors, we teach more students.
To date, Idaho WWAMI has 747 graduates. 367 of those graduates have worked or are working in Idaho for a return rate of 51%. WWAMI students from other states often rotate through Idaho during clinical training, and some of those students return to Idaho to practice. The return rate for all WWAMI students in Idaho is 72%.
The Idaho WWAMI partnership is required to teach the same content to our students that other medical schools are required to teach across the country to pass the national licensing exam. This includes women’s health content such as normal labor and delivery as well as complications including miscarriages that require abortion procedures.
Medical students are required to complete clinical clerkships in emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, neurology, pediatrics, psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) and surgery rotations. The family medicine and OB/GYN rotations include women’s health. Clinical electives are not required courses-rather, students seek elective training outside the required clinical coursework. The women’s reproductive health elective includes teaching about abortions; this elective is only available in states where it is legal to offer this content.
We recognize that state leaders want to see WWAMI curriculum and Idaho state law work in concert with each other. We believe that we have the right plans and programs in place that respects Idaho’s laws and also makes it possible for our students to receive the education they need to successfully complete the national medical licensing exam.
The University of Washington School of Medicine is proud of the work we have done to help educate future generations of physicians for Idaho. As long as the State of Idaho asks us to continue our partnership in medical education, we will continue working with our partners to provide the exceptional medical education Idaho WWAMI students deserve.