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First-year SWAG��Ƶ College of Osteopathic Medicine (COM) students Wilson Mei and Sean Lombard recently completed a one-month pilot immersion program at Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital and Northern Counties Health Care in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

The immersion program, the first in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom for SWAG��Ƶ COM, is intended to introduce and highlight patient-centered care early on in a medical student’s education.

“It’s a great way to start early training and for them to understand what options lie ahead for the future,” said Victoria S. Thieme, D.O., director of Clinical Experience in COM.

The program helps connect a student’s newfound interests in rural health care needs through job shadowing.

“I had immediately ruled out psychiatry and family medicine,” explained Mei. “But having shadowed in family medicine and psychiatry, I realized I was entirely wrong about my perception of these fields. Being exposed to all these different departments, I experienced a wide range of what it means to be a rural physician.”

The experience not only introduces students to different specialties and methods of practicing medicine, it highlights the

importance and value of practicing in rural and underserved communities.

“You see people who are really good at what they do,” said Lombard. “And you want to be like them.”

The immersion also included a research component. Lombard worked with Thieme to design a project that studies how individuals with substance use disorders are tracked.

Vermont’s system of Medication Assisted Treatment uses the hub and spoke model, which supports people in recovery from opioid use disorder. Hubs are locations that offer daily support and spokes are supports set up within general health care services. Lombard and Mei compared outcomes with the results gathered by a student who participated in an immersion program in Maine, which does not have a hub and spoke model.