Third-year medical students complete a required primary care clerkship in general internal medicine, family medicine or pediatrics in a rural or underserved setting. The clerkship is designed to benefit both students and patients. Moreover, it is a key element in increasing the number of primary care providers in rural areas. Through rural rotations, several OHSU residency programs offer firsthand experience in Oregon's less-populated communities and medically underserved areas. In medically underserved areas of Clackamas County, residents in primary care, and specialties such as dermatology and psychiatry, provide care at sites ranging from school-based clinics to migrant health centers.
Residents gain experience in utilization review, quality assurance and health care administration.
The OHSU Physician Assistant Program, the first such program in the state, was mandated by the state Legislature to prepare physician assistants for the delivery of primary care services to rural and urban medically underserved populations. In Lake Oswego at Healthfirst Medical and at the Clackamas Pediatric Clinic at Kaiser Permanente five second-year students work in a variety of clinical settings under the guidance of local physicians. OHSU's Office of Rural Health helps rural areas solve their health practitioner shortages and hospital-related problems by helping these communities throughout Oregon recruit and retain practitioners. By helping recruit and retain practitioners, and by promoting training specific to the rural setting, the state is seeing an increase in physicians offering care in these communities. Currently 158 OHSU medical school graduates are in active practice in Clackamas County.