COM STUDENTS SHARE THEIR LIC EXPERIENCES DURING COVID-19
Samantha Mansberger, COM ‘22
Northern Light Maine Coast Hospital in Ellsworth, ME
Since I was little, I dreamed about becoming a doctor like my dad. Some of my fondest memories are of going to the hospital with him before school to see newborns. My dad was one of three pediatricians in my hometown in rural Pennsylvania. Specialists were few and far between and I was constantly seeing the importance of primary care providers in our area. One of my biggest draws to UNE COM was the amount of primary care physicians that they train. During the first two years of medical school, I was excited to participate in programs and extracurricular activities that helped prepare students to work with underserved population and in rural areas. When I heard that there was a third-year curriculum focused specifically on primary care and rural medicine with placements throughout Maine, I jumped at the opportunity to apply.
The longitudinal integrated clerkship (LIC) is an opportunity through Northern Light Health that places students in a primary care office in Maine for their entire third year. This allows students to follow their patients to specialty appointments, build rapport with patients long-term, and become integrated into the community in which they live. In addition to the primary care clinic, students get other experiences in specialties like surgery and psychiatry by either following patients from the clinic to those appointments and procedures or through a monthly burst week. This is compared to the block clerkship where students spend 6 weeks in each core rotation: family medicine, psychiatry, internal medicine, pediatrics, surgery, and OB/GYN.
Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical center in Bangor is like a home base for the LIC students as some experiences we can only get there. Otherwise, we are spread out over several locations between Portland and Presque Isle. The placement a student receives depends on the student’s specific interests and the preceptor that fits best for them. I am located in Ellsworth, and my interests lie in pediatrics. During the interview process, it was brought to my attention that there was a pediatric based placement in the works for this year. Fortunately, this placement worked out and I am in the pediatric clinic two full days a week and an internal medicine clinic another day. The other two days of the week are considered “white space”. Half a day is in the OB-GYN clinic and the rest of the time is split between follow-up appointments with patients from the clinic, working on my community project, or self-studying.
My experiences thus far have been great despite the COVID-19 pandemic. I am lucky to be integrated into a system that had a plan on how to handle the pandemic. In the clinic we wear face masks, as well as safety glasses, when seeing patients. In the clinics, I have three incredible primary preceptors that care about providing me with valuable experiences. I have been challenged to come up with differential diagnoses, get a complete and accurate history on my own, and document my findings in patient charts from day one. I have found that the LIC uniquely gives me the opportunity to direct my own training. I get to choose patients to see based on chief complaints that I need to learn more about. I am given the time to learn and do my own research on these topics throughout the day. I track my interactions and log them to show progress through the curriculum. Most of my friends are spread out throughout New England doing their block clerkships. Talking with them I have been able to compare my training and theirs. I have found that even in my short