BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (AP) - The University of Kentucky College of Medicine is partnering with The Medical Center and Western Kentucky University to expand its medical school to Warren County and the surrounding community.
The UK College of Medicine initiative is scheduled to begin in Bowling Green in 2018 with 30 students, The Bowling Green Daily News reported (https://bit.ly/2hRpy0z ).
The partnership is poised to help alleviate a physician shortage in the region and allow Western Kentucky’s faculty access to medical research opportunities.
“It’s not every day that you’re able to get a medical school in your community and this is a big accomplishment,” Dr. Don Brown, The Medical Center’s director of medical education, said. “It raises the bar for the practice of medicine.”
Medical school students will attend classes in Bowling Green in a building on the campus of The Medical Center. The medical degree will be conferred by UK, and a certain number of slots in the program will be available first to WKU students.
“There is not a medical school in southcentral Kentucky and the western part of the state,” Brown said. “The closest medical school to us is (the University of) Louisville or Vanderbilt (University). We lose a lot of pre-med students to medical schools and they go away. We know if a Kentuckian trains in Kentucky, he or she is likely to stay in Kentucky.”
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Information from: Daily News, https://www.bgdailynews.com
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