ARMC and UCR School of Medicine Partnership Provides Pathway for Development of Future Physician Leaders

University of California, Riverside (UCR) senior Ulysses Robles, 21, sees the opportunity to shadow a doctor at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center (ARMC) as a path to realizing his dream of becoming a physician. Robles, one of 19 pre-medical students rotating through ARMC this summer as part of UCR’s School of Medicine Future Physician Leaders (FPL) program, shadowed Dr. Milton Retamozo, an attending physician in ARMC’s Surgery Department, on July 22. This is the second year that ARMC has served as a physician-shadowing site. “I grew up as one of 10 children in my family, and my mother was a single parent for half of my life,” said Robles, a first-generation college student who would eventually like to practice medicine in San Bernardino, an underserved community and his hometown. “I learned about the FPL program through UCR’s web site and saw that the physician-shadowing portion of the program would allow me to see firsthand what to expect in medical school and as a physician.” FPL is a long-term mentorship program that aims to prepare students to become physician leaders in the community. The six-week summer program runs through Aug. 2, and consists of a leadership lecture series, community project, and physician shadowing rotations at four local medical facilities. The students shadowing at ARMC range from college sophomores to graduates. The students are from the following schools: California State University, San Bernardino; Chaffey College; East Los Angeles College; La Sierra University; Riverside Community College; University of California, Los Angeles; and UCR. Twelve of the students are from the County of San Bernardino and come from Adelanto, Fontana, Rancho Cucamonga, Redlands, San Bernardino, and Yucaipa. FPL was founded in 2009 by Congressman Raul Ruiz, M.D., a Harvard Medical School graduate who grew up in the City of Coachella. Dr. Ruiz served as an emergency medicine physician at Eisenhower Medical Center in the Coachella Valley and was recently elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, representing California’s 36th District. Dr. Ruiz is currently on a leave of absence from Eisenhower Medical Center and FPL. Dr. Neal Schiller, Senior Associate Dean of Student Affairs at the UCR School of Medicine is serving as director of the program. “This program increases ARMC’s profile in the community by providing students with the opportunity to see what we do at the hospital, how a public safety net hospital operates, and the services that we offer to the community,” said Dr. Rodney Borger, chairman of the Emergency Department, and currently a mentor helping to train and encourage these students to go to medical school and come back to serve the community. “We need to grow our own physicians to help alleviate the physician shortage in the Inland Empire, and programs like this help to further that goal.” This summer a total of 149 students are participating at two sites, Riverside–San Bernardino and Coachella Valley. Approximately 228 applications were received in 2013, 80 students were chosen to participate at the Riverside–San Bernardino site, and 80 at the Coachella Valley site (11 had prior commitments and could not participate). Twenty students from each site were selected by a panel for the physician-shadowing rotations. Students at ARMC will shadow Dr. Borger; Dr. Joseph Vivian Davis, program director for the General Surgery Residency Program; Dr. Retamozo in the Surgery Department, and several senior emergency medicine residents. “I started the program in 2009 after I spoke at different high schools throughout the Coachella Valley and after every talk there was always students who came in telling me that they wanted to do exactly what I was doing in terms of being a physician and coming back to serve the community,” said Dr. Ruiz. “I saw the same passion in their eyes that I had in my eyes when I was their age, and I saw that same desire to be a physician.”