Learning about the unique health care needs of military veterans will be required for second-year students in the T.H. Chan School of Medicine, starting this month with an intensive two-day training at the Veterans Affairs clinic on the UMass Chan Medical School campus in Worcester.
The 150 medical students taking part in the training at the community-based outpatient clinic operated by the VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System will hear from health care providers who care for veterans, practice interviews with veterans, tour the facility and see the spaces where veterans receive care.
“We want to provide students with a unique understanding of who receives care at the VA, the demographics of our patients and their military history and the types of things that veterans may have been exposed to that may produce lingering health consequences,” said Kristin Mattocks, PhD, MPH, professor of population & quantitative health sciences and associate dean for veterans affairs at UMass Chan. “I am very certain that this particular collection of activities over a two-day period is the first of its kind of any VA and affiliate medical school immersive trainings.”
The trainings scheduled for Nov. 15 and Nov. 29 represent the first time UMass Chan second-year medical students will be required to attend a learning session at the VA clinic. Twenty-four students in the Population-based Urban and Rural Community Health track, based at UMass Chan-Baystate in Springfield, will participate in a separate veterans’ health education session this month.
Previously, the Medical School curriculum provided an opportunity for fourth-year medical students to visit the VA occasionally, through an optional enrichment elective or through interstitials, where a tour of the VA clinic would be one of seven day-long clinical education programs.
These second-year students are the first class to experience the T.H. Chan School of Medicine’s new curriculum, Vista, which was introduced in fall 2022. The Vista curriculum incorporates a health system science pillar, in addition to the biomedical and clinical science pillars, and adds health equity, diversity and inclusion, population and community health, and patient and provider wellness to required studies.
“Thinking about the diversity of our patients and providing health equity across all patient populations is a thread we are emphasizing throughout all four years. With this training, we can introduce this content earlier to students, so that they can understand the importance of someone's military service in regard to their health,” said Susan Hogan, MD, MPH, assistant professor of family medicine & community health.
Dr. Hogan is the longitudinal focus topic director for Societal Forces in Health and Disease and the co-director for the Early Clinical Learning Curriculum in the Vista program at UMass Chan.
Elizabeth Ferzacca, MD, assistant professor of medicine, and the early clinical learning small groups curriculum director in the Vista program, said, “This training session falls in year two of a doctor-patient communication course where we start to deepen our knowledge and mastery of specific communication skills. We are focusing on learning and mastering military history to use on a regular basis with their patients because of the impact that military history has on disease risk and outcomes.”
Terence R. Flotte, MD, the Celia and Isaac Haidak Professor, executive deputy chancellor, provost and dean of the T. H. Chan School of Medicine, will make a presentation to students at the start of the training.
Deborah DeMarco, MD, a long time VA health care provider, who recently retired from her positions at UMass Chan as professor of medicine, senior associate dean for clinical affairs and associate dean for graduate medical education; Megan Brault, PsyD, assistant professor of psychiatry; Brinda Sanjay, MD, assistant professor of medicine; and Nicole Kirchen, MD, director of VA specialty care for VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System, are among the providers speaking to students during the session.
The community-based outpatient clinic opened in 2021 and provides veterans with access to primary and specialty health care in a space designed for patient-aligned care teams. The medical student training sessions at the outpatient clinic aligns with UMass Chan’s institutional goal to support the training of future physicians and nurses to ensure exceptional health care for those who have served.
