Heid JK Rural Physician Associate Program RPAP, Boon to Rural Minnesota Minnesota Medicine 1979 62:826-828 View from the practitioner with history of 5 students so far, students shadow and pitch in to community activities at the start. At start the student is "bright, eager, and well-founded in basic medical theory, but … elegantly green in clinical experience. The student is treated with respect in the office and in the town café and "gains confidence, blossoms, and thrives." Still supervision through faculty visits and interview videotapes and specialist visits. By the end of the year the student has delivered 25 - 50 babies, has repaired countless lacerations, fractures, first assists, lines, tubes, taps, intubations, practice management skills.
"In one year the student develops surprising professional maturity. In the classroom of real life he has learned tha sound medical practice is born of sound medical theory. He has seen how rural family practice can bend or break a man but how it rarely bores him. He has witnessed the challenging clinical mix of the mundane and the monstrous. And he returns to academia a wiser, more confident, more searching student."
"RPAP builds bridges of good will between the University and rural doctors. Many physicians recall the days when the hapless and hopeless referring LMD was dismissed with scorn at the professor's grand rounds. Times have changed! Monthly University visits have done much to dispel the doubts. When men of professional stature… come out to the rural hospital, make rounds, break bread, and discuss common problems with the local medical staff, new bonds of understanding grow quickly between small town and gown."
"The rural physician today is something of a breed apart. He thinks he owns the best of both worlds. He lives and works in a rustic, often pastoral, setting. Still, with the ease of modern transportation, he finds that the cultural and recreational attractions of the city lie within his easy reach. Granted, it was not always so. The beloved horse and buggy doctor of the past suffered professional isolation and grueling demands on his time. False image die hard. RPAP places the student in the country to find out for himself."
"Does RPAP motivate the student to later return to the rural area as a fully training doctor? This, of course, is the ultimate test of the success of the program… (stats presented) … In our case, our first RPAP student returned to join us in practice (as have 60 of 900 so far - ed note). And it may signal the wave of the future to note that this young physician, an honor student, chose primary care rather than academic medicine or research. RPAP could just become the best doctor recruitment program that the rural areas have known."