When it comes to medical education, Spokane is in an enviable position. It hosts students from two medical schools. Few American cities can say that. Together, they welcome about 120 new students each year. Spokane is also home to several residency programs that train newly-graduated doctors.
Spokane’s medical education scene has experienced remarkable growth during the last 15 years, going back to the days when the University of Washington and Washington State were partners in administering the UW's five-state WWAMI medical program here. At that time, Spokane hosted 20 first-year medical students.cEventually, WSU decided to go its own way and create the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine.
The UW had to find a new partner to help with its operations in Spokane. It formed a partnership with Gonzaga University that is now 10 years old.
This interview is lightly edited for clarity and length.
Darryl Potyk: It was a big, audacious idea to have a big public university partner with a small private Jesuit university. And many people said, how's that going to work? And it's just worked beautifully.
DN: Darryl Potyk is the UW School of Medicine’s associate dean and the chief of medical education for the UW-Gonzaga Health Partnership.
DP: Shared values and communication have really paved the way for us and we've accomplished some great things.
DN: I know there were some questions about a public university and a private university working together. But did you run into issues along the way that were kind of sticky? Or has it been smoother than you thought it might be?
DP: I would say yes and yes. You know, there have been issues that have arisen. But it's been easier and easier because we recognize our shared values and, like I said earlier, our communication. We talk all the time. When there are big issues that come up that may abut up against the church and state line, we're well aware of those and we steer clear of those and we talk through it and how we're going to approach them. So I think there have been issues. But I think, by and large, the partnership has been wildly successful.
DN: John Sklut is the executive director of the health partnership and a senior advisor to Gonzaga’s president.
John Sklut: When they separated and Washington State University started their own medical school, the University of Washington, I'd say, to its great credit, was committed to remaining in eastern Washington and operating their medical school program here. It's that commitment to this region that matches exactly with Gonzaga's commitment to the region and that mission alignment has, I think, really made this easier or less complicated than many might have expected.
DN: The physical symbol of their partnership is a four-story building, called the 840 Building, at the south end of Gonzaga’s campus where UW’s medical and dental students and Gonzaga human physiology students learn.
DN: What did the universities need from each other at the very start? And how have you fulfilled those?
DP: Let me just start by saying we've grown from what we need to what we want and that's a really important inflection point. Initially, what we needed was some basic science education for the medical students. We also needed space.
I think if we look and see how many joint faculty we've hired, we look at this building, we look at the new programs that it spawned, the expansion of the number of students we have here, I think it's been wildly successful. At the same time, we're remaining true to our values. And for years, we've had a great presence in basically an award-winning rural program. We continue to be out in the rural spaces with our students, with our programs, doing research out there. And I think the collaboration with Gonzaga has solidified that, and we'll take it to a whole new level.
JS: I think one of the really important components from a student perspective is that the students are co-registered as Gonzaga students and, therefore, they have access to Gonzaga resources, facilities, health and counseling center, our gym, access to all the facilities on campus. That was important not just from the University of Washington School of Medicine's approach, their accreditation standards, but it was also important to make sure that the medical students felt a part of this community. Gonzaga has been really proud to offer that to the medical students.
I think from Gonzaga's standpoint, the foundation was to ensure that we were a component of the training of healthcare professionals that our region needs. That's the primary focus. It has also really presented Gonzaga with an opportunity to highlight our health science programs, to expand and introduce new health science programs. I think that's been a real benefit to our programs. It's been a real benefit to our community as well, that we are now training students across additional health science programs.
DN: Has Gonzaga seen a sort of a feeder program to the UW School of Medicine?
JS: I would say, wanting to be careful, not technically, no, because there are no reserved spots for Gonzaga graduates in each class. That being said, I think historically, over the past 10 years, there have been at least a few Gonzaga graduates in each of those classes. But one of the things that we always try to focus on, of course, is leading with our students.
I'll kind of get to that question a little bit in the feeder aspect, in that the medical students here are incredibly generous with their time in talking to the undergraduate students who are thinking about medical school, talking to them about how to best position themselves, mentoring them about the approach to medical school. It has also provided Gonzaga undergraduate students with really, really highly specialized and very unusual access to partnerships, dual research programs. Undergraduate students doing summer research programs with medical students and medical school faculty, that's very unusual. Our undergraduate students having access to the anatomy suite in this building and being taught by a UW anatomist, that's very unusual. So all of that really certainly increases our undergraduate students’ want to think about medical school and some of the real foundational experiences they need to really increase their chances of getting into medical school.
DN: Across the street from the building that houses the medical and dental schools is the SIERR Building that houses the UW's MEDEX program for physician assistant students. It’s part of what the schools call the Health Peninsula.
DN: Does the Health Peninsula include just the UW and Gonzaga programs or does it include WSU, Eastern's increased presence? Even Whitworth has a presence there.
DP: I think when we refer to the Peninsula, we refer to right in this parking lot area here, the 840 building and SIERR, basically. We have the medical school program, we have the MedEx program, our physician assistant program. We now have the dental school and we have Eastern Washington University's nursing school and their communication school all right here and they're gonna be moving their dental hygiene program over here. So it's really just a wonderful confluence and synergy for interprofessional education moving forward.
JS: And since the start of the partnership 10 years ago, Gonzaga has started its undergraduate program in public health. We've started a bachelor's in neuroscience. We've increased the capacity in our human physiology program and in our nursing program. That's all kind of contributed to this ecosystem that we've created here.
DN: So you're at 10 years, what does 15 and 20 look like?
DP: It's a great question. My crystal ball's got a cataract. But I think that we are reaching out into the communities and doing a needs-based assessment and then doing research based on that. And I think what we're really looking at is together with Gonzaga's School of Public Health and the outreach and just amplifying what we can do in some of those rural communities and doing it in a more longitudinal fashion so it'll be more meaningful and impactful for those rural communities. I think that's a big thing.
I think the other thing that's exciting, Dr. Jones, our president, is interested in engineering and medicine. Gonzaga has a new bioscience program. So I think there's a lot of potential here. I know that our presidents are hopefully getting together in the near future and I think they will plot the course for us. But it's going to be exciting no matter what it is.
DN: Are there extra buildings? Is there any space here? Are you pretty much built out in this area right here?
JS: I would say certainly from the Gonzaga campus perspective, our current acreage, we're pretty well built out. But that was certainly one of the components of the partnership when it was founded and formed 10 years ago. In order to guarantee its long-term sustainability, certainly a facility was necessary. For its first seven years, it was on the Schoenberg Center on Gonzaga University's campus, which was a great facility, but it wasn't constructed for medical education. So the ability of this partnership and the energy and this ecosystem that we're developing to attract the private investment for this facility was certainly really significant. Where that expansion may continue to grow, that's part of what we're going to really talk about and figure out in the next decade.
