UPMC Altoona and Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia have established a partnership under which a contingent of Drexel students in each class will spend their third and fourth years in school doing their clinical rotations in Altoona.

The arrangement will make UPMC a regional clinical campus for Drexel — the first such campus in the history of the Altoona area.

“This is huge,” said Dr. David Burwell, the local hospital’s chief medical information officer and interim dean for the regional Drexel campus.

It’s not the first time that the local hospital has been a teaching venue for medical students — it has taken such students for years, but usually for only a rotation of four to six weeks, Burwell said.

Living here for two years and taking all of their rotations here “is a pretty large distinction,” he said.

The new status for the local hospital grew in organic fashion out of a mutual interest between the parties, according to Burwell.

Drexel students have been among those that have done the several-week rotations here, and they tended to like the experience — assigning it high marks in their feedback to Drexel, while also talking about it favorably with fellow students there, Burwell said.

That was especially true for students doing rotations in neurology and psychiatry, Burwell said.

The Drexel students liked the diversity of the patient population they encountered here, as a result of Altoona’s being a regional referral center, he said.

That gave them experiences with many complex conditions, helping them learn, he said.

They also enjoyed favorable working relationships with the attending or supervising physicians they encountered here, with good, direct interaction that isn’t always possible in other hospital settings, Burwell said.

The Drexel students also found the larger community quite inviting, Burwell said.

“They enjoy going to our coffee shops and churches and being involved in community activities” like church choirs, he said.

They quickly feel a sense of belonging, he said.

And they find the surrounding area feels very safe, he added.

The students at Drexel choose where they go for their third and fourth year clinical rotations, and since the new arrangement has been formalized, Altoona has been the first or second choice for all 12 of the students who will be starting here May 11, Burwell said.

Those slots filled quickly, he said.

Another batch of Drexel students will be coming next year for their own two-year clinical experience, while the first batch finishes out their terms.

All those Drexel students, as well as a handful from Pitt, Duquesne, the College of Osteopathic Medicine, Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine and others, coming for short-term rotations, will mean that next year, UPMC Altoona will be training 30 or more would-be physicians at any one time, according to Burwell.

The appeal is not one-way, as the physicians here generally enjoy teaching medical students, according to Burwell.

The local hospital also recognizes that the enhanced relationship with Drexel could create a potential pipeline for physician recruitment, Burwell said.

When people come here, there’s a high propensity of them staying, Burwell said.

There are currently physician shortages in primary care and psychiatry and projected shortages in other specialties that access to more doctors can help ameliorate, he said.

“We want to get in front of it,” he said.

UPMC Altoona currently has one residency program, for family medicine.

The Drexel students could apply to join it after completing their two years here, Burwell said.

But there are currently no plans at this time to take advantage of the new influx by adding residency programs for other specialties, Burwell said.

Enrolling about 305 students per year from all over the country, Drexel is the largest private medical school in the U.S. that awards allopathic medical degrees — denoted “MD,” as opposed to osteopathic, or DO, degrees, according to Chuck Cairns, MD, dean of the Drexel College of Medicine.

The school’s history begins in Philadelphia with Hahnemann Medical College, founded in 1848, and the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, the first U.S. medical school for women, founded in 1850.

Those two institutions merged in 1993 and were folded into Drexel in 2002.

Drexel College of Medicine is highly selective, with 16,000 applicants for those 305 spots, according to online sources.

“It’s tough even to get an interview,” Cairns said.

Drexel already has other regional campuses for clinical rotations in cities that include Philadelphia, Reading, Harrisburg, Atlantic City, Trenton, Dover, Del., and San Francisco, according to Cairns.

It’s common for students to choose to do their clinical rotations in the kinds of areas — rural, suburban, urban — in which they grew up, Cairns said.

Offering a variety of settings for clinical campuses is becoming a more common model for medical schools, Cairns said.

It’s common for med students to end up serving in the communities where they train, Cairns said.

Drexel wants its medical students to commit to the communities in which they end up serving, and to become leaders in those communities, Cairns said.

UPMC Altoona offers a range of “clerkship” specialties for the third and fourth year students, including medicine, family medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, neurology, pediatrics, psychiatry and surgery, according to Cairns and a joint news release.

The students coming to Altoona will be living in housing “around town,” Cairns said.

“It’s something you will start seeing,” he said. “We’re really excited to be in Altoona.”

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.