On September
26, 1905, the North Dakota State Legislature established a
medical school at the University of North Dakota. With that
action, the legislature set in motion an entity that would
become one of the more crucial elements in supporting and
enhancing the quality of life for people of this state and
region.
This year, the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences
is celebrating its centennial with events throughout the state
that will commemorate the anniversary and highlight the School’s
impact through education, research, and service. The celebration
will culminate with an alumni reunion during Homecoming this
fall in Grand Forks.
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The School has an illustrious history. Over the past 100
years, the School has prospered and its leaders and faculty
have created a vibrant institution praised nationally as a
leader in medical education and rural health.
It is credited statewide as a tremendous resource for the
citizens and a dynamic and vital force for North Dakota’s
advancement.
At the dawn of the 20th century, legislators recognized the
need for the state to offer medical education. Most of them
were farmers living in rural settings with little or no medical
care. These legislators founded a medical school to provide
North Dakotans with the opportunity to become physicians and
stay in state to establish practices.
Until the mid-1970s, North Dakota’s Medical School offered
only a basic science curriculum, leading to the Bachelor of
Science in Medicine degree. Students were able to pursue medical
education at a very reasonable cost. Many alumni readily affirm
that they could not have pursued a career in medicine had
it not been for the existence of the Medical School.
School of Medicine and Health
Sciences at the University of North Dakota
- As one of about 25 “community-based”
medical schools in the United States (out of a total
of 125), it relies largely on practicing physicians
in community hospitals, rather than a university hospital,
to help educate medical students.
- Highly respected nationally for its “patient-centered
learning” educational program and the quality
of its medical graduates, the School of Medicine and
Health Sciences has educated almost half of all practicing
doctors in North Dakota.
- The School has also educated about 70 percent of
physician assistants and 86 percent of physical and
occupational therapists practicing in the state.
- Its major focus is on producing excellent doctors
for North Dakota, with an emphasis on family physicians
interested in serving more rural areas.
- Its Center for Rural Health is one of the nation’s
best and includes the only Rural Assistance Center,
a worldwide clearinghouse for information on rural
health issues.
- With a marked increase in research productivity
over the past 10 years, the School attracts nearly
$30 million in federal grant funding to North Dakota.
The majority of these funds are used for salaries,
leading to new jobs and new taxpayers for the state.
- The UND Medical School operates just one of 11
sites in the nation that have the advanced technology
— the positron emission tomography scanner,
cyclotron, and related laboratory — to study
neurodegenerative diseases, as well as the processes
in the brain that can lead to drug addiction.
- The School is committed to the study of diseases
and conditions that affect people of this region:
diabetes, cancer, obesity and eating disorders, Parkinson’s,
alcoholism, fetal alcohol syndrome, and osteoarthritis.
- The Department of Family Medicine is one of two
in the country to be designated as a national Center
of Excellence in Women’s Health, Region VIII
Demonstration Project, a model for improving
health care for women.
- For more than 30 years the School’s Indians
Into Medicine (INMED) program has educated medical
doctors and other health professionals for service
on reservations and elsewhere.
- It has been selected as one of 10 medical schools
nationwide to receive a grant from the American Medical
Association to study how best to teach and promote
professionalism in medicine.
These accomplishments and national recognition are
evidence of the excellence and the high standards to
which the School’s faculty aspire every day. The
UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences is one of
this country’s outstanding smaller, community-based
medical schools.
There is much to celebrate in this, the 100th anniversary
of its founding.
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After two years of medical education at UND, students then
transferred to other medical schools, such as Harvard, Northwestern,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and many others across
America, to complete the Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree.
They were consistently surprised and pleased to discover they
had been educated as well or better than their classmates
at these highly respected schools.
In 1971 the Carnegie Report recommended that two-year medical
schools should close or convert to four-year, M.D.-granting
institutions, since there had been a sharp reduction in the
number of seats into which two-year medical students could
transfer. With this national impetus, North Dakota faced a
crossroads. The choice was between ending its medical education
program or expanding it to enable students to complete the
M.D. degree in the state.
Aware of these trends and concerned about a shortage of physicians,
the State Legislature made the commitment to expand the program
to offer the full medical degree at UND and to provide residency
training in primary care fields such as family medicine, internal
medicine, and others.
In that pivotal year, 1973, UND Medical School administrators
began the process of transition; in the spring of 1976, graduates
of the first class, 40 of them, walked across the stage to
receive North Dakota’s first M.D. degrees.
Over the past 30 years, the impact of the School on the availability
of health care services in the state, especially in terms
of physicians, has been nothing short of phenomenal.
Three years before the State Legislature approved the four-year
medical education program, less than 20 percent of physicians
practicing in the state were alumni of the Medical School.
Today, the percentage of practicing physicians who are UND
alumni has risen to about 47 percent while the number of physicians
has grown nearly threefold over the past three decades.
The School of Medicine and Health Sciences offers programs
in medicine, physician assistant studies, physical and occupational
therapy, clinical laboratory science, cytotechnology, and
athletic training, in addition to anatomy and cell biology,
biochemistry and molecular biology, microbiology and immunology,
and pharmacology, physiology and therapeutics.
Postgraduate residency training is offered in family medicine,
internal medicine, psychiatry, and general surgery, as well
as a one-year transitional program for physicians who plan
to pursue training in such areas as anesthesiology, radiology,
dermatology, and other specialties.
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The Class of 2008
The entering Class of 2008 began its studies on August 2.
That group of 62 included 32 men and 30 women, and ranged
in age from 21 to 35, with a mean average of 24. Forty-six
are North Dakota residents; the others are participants in
the federally funded Indians Into Medicine program or exchange
programs negotiated with the Western Interstate Compact for
Higher Education (WICHE) and the State of Minnesota.
Although most are North Dakotans, not all attended college
within the state. These prospective M.D. recipients earned
their undergraduate degrees at 31 institutions:
- Sixteen from the University of North Dakota.
- Eight from Concordia College.
- Five from North Dakota State University.
- Four from the University of Minnesota.
- Two each from Jamestown College, Montana State University,
and the University of Montana.
- One each from Boston College, the College of St. Benedict,
Dakota Wesleyan, Gustavus
Adolphus, Harvard, Hope College, Mayville State, Minot State,
New York University, Northern Arizona, St. John’s
University, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology,
Texas Tech University, the University of Arizona, the University
of Findlay, the University of Mary, the University of Nebraska,
University of Notre Dame, University of Oklahoma, the University
of Puget Sound, the University of St. Thomas, the University
of Wyoming, and Wheaton College.
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