A new scribe fellowship program at UMass Chan Medical School is giving recent college graduates who are underrepresented in medicine an opportunity to gain clinical experience as they prepare to apply for medical school.
“A scribe is a critical righthand person for a physician in practice and really helps with the documentation and the ability to allow a physician to interact with the patient more directly with someone in the background, transferring all of the information into the electronic medical record,” said Linda Cragin, MS, instructor in family medicine & community health and director of the Massachusetts Area Health Education Center Network (MassAHEC), in a new Voices of UMass Chan podcast.
The fellowship is a collaboration between the Department of Family Medicine & Community Health, the T.H. Chan School of Medicine Office of Admissions and MassAHEC, which is supported by a federal grant. The first cohort of scribe fellows worked part-time at UMass Memorial Health with primary care physicians.
The fellowship offers scribe training, coaching from UMass Chan medical students and a series of weekly academic enrichment sessions. These include study skills development, goal setting, case presentation, narrative medicine and the impact of social determinants of health. Fellows are paired with Medical School mentors and can participate in additional learning opportunities. UMass Chan recently partnered with Scribe America to provide training.
Jessica Jawhar and Camilla Prata are among the first cohort of scribe fellows. Jawhar, a UMass Boston graduate, and Prata, a UMass Amherst graduate, are part of the UMass Baccalaureate MD Pathway Program (BaccMD). The BaccMD program helps prepare students for successful matriculation to medical school. It is open to students at the undergraduate UMass campuses who are from racial or ethnic groups underrepresented in medicine, who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds or who are first-generation college graduates.
“I wanted to become a part of the program because it would allow me to gain more clinical exposure in a clinical setting,” said Prata. “It’s a great opportunity to be a part of a health care team, to work alongside a physician as well as nurses and medical assistants in helping a patient.”
“It’s more than the documentation and creating a SOAP note or order imaging and labs. It's about being able to witness that patient–provider interaction, which is very hard for a pre-med student to gain that experience,” Jawhar said. “The scribe fellowship has exceeded my expectations from the beginning, and honestly, has contributed to my motivation and passion for medicine.”
The fellowship program begins in June and runs for 13 months.
Applicants must have an interest in medicine and the ability to work in a fast-paced practice following busy clinicians during the course of their 8- to 12-hour days. Successful scribes bring good organization skills with the ability to multitask and prioritize; strong English reading, writing and speaking skills; and good computer and typing skills (40+ words per minute). Some understanding of medical terminology is helpful.
For more information about the program, contact Cragin at Linda.Cragin@umassmed.edu.
Listen to the full podcast at: umassmed.edu/news/voices.
