Despite the loss of accreditation by the Martin Luther King/Drew
Medical Center in February 2005, UCLA has continued its affiliation
with the hospital’s medical education program, citing the
recent reaccreditation of UCLA’s medical school as reason to
continue the relationship.
The UCLA/Charles R. Drew University Medical Education program
was reviewed as part of the reaccreditation process for the David
Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
Dale Tate, a spokeswoman for UCLA, said the accreditors were
impressed and did not have any problems with the program, a
partnership between UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine
and the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.
Medical students are required to spend the first two years of
the four-year program at UCLA studying general medical classes. The
final two years of the program are spent studying at Drew
University and involve some clinical rotations as part of their
residency at King/Drew.
The loss of accreditation earlier this year left the future of
King/Drew and the program in question.
In February 2005, Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky
told the Los Angeles Times, “We lost the accreditation
because the hospital is in an absolute mess. It’s far worse
than anybody had known.”
Among the problems King/Drew was dealing with were patient
deaths related to poor nursing and hospital mismanagement, revealed
by a series of stories in the Times.
Eight months later, the hospital has yet to regain full
accreditation.
However, the program is being monitored for quality by the
Liaison Committee on Medical Education, an accrediting authority
for medical programs in the U.S. recognized by the American Medical
Association, said Dr. Ronald A. Edelstein, acting dean at the Drew
University.
“The LCME, UCLA and Drew monitor very closely the student
education to make sure they’re getting all the experiences
they should be getting,” he said.
Edelstein added that, due to budget cuts in the county, students
also do rotations at other hospitals when King/Drew does not have
the best resources available for them.
Renewed concerns over the quality of education received by
students in the program come on the heels of the release of a study
about the program, headed by Dr. Michelle Ko, a resident in
internal medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine and former
student of the program. Edelstein is a co-author of the
project.
The study, “Impact of the University of California, Los
Angeles/Charles R. Drew University Medical Education Program on
Medical Students’ Intentions to Practice in Underserved
Areas,” was published in the September issue of Academic
Medicine.
The study found that 86 percent of students in the program
indicated an intent to work in underserved communities once they
finish the program, compared with 20 percent of UCLA students not
in the program.
“I realized that (the program has been) in existence for
24 years and we haven’t yet started to track the graduates
and see whether it was working,” Ko said. “The program
is to train physicians to work in underserved communities, and I
wanted to see if this was effective.”
Professor Kevin Heslin, another co-author on the project, said
the study accounted for other factors, such as the race and
socioeconomic backgrounds of the students, that could affect
individuals’ decisions to continue working in underserved
communities, which are often mostly composed of poor blacks and
Latinos.
“It’s not surprising that minority medical students
are more interested in poor minority patients,” Heslin
said.
The program prepares students to deal with the challenges facing
underserved communities, such as healthcare disparities and
“competing needs” that often prevent people from
getting the care they need, Heslin said.
“(The poor) have other needs that they have to attend to
… getting kids to school, getting to work. That makes it
hard,” he said.
All of the challenges in these communities and the lack of
doctors increase the importance of this type of program, said
Edelstein.
“We know there need to be more Drews,” he said.