First-year medical students visit Springfield hospitals, clinical campus

Despite the biting cold and the dark hours of the morning on Thursday, Nov. 9, there was one source of warmth, emanating from a bus full of first-year medical students bound for Springfield, Missouri. They chatted amongst themselves, trading bets on what their future home had in store for them.

After acceptance to the MU School of Medicine, students are assigned to a clinical campus in either Columbia or Springfield for their third and fourth year. This process occurs through a lottery system, which takes students’ preferences into account.

This particular group of students have been assigned to the Springfield Clinical Campus (SCC) and will rotate through Springfield hospitals CoxHealth and Mercy for their medical education.

During their trip, students toured both facilities with the help of some current Springfield students. They led them through the hospitals and showed the first years the patient floors and intensive care units, emergency departments, cafeterias and more.

“You don’t have to buy groceries here if you don’t want to. There’s free breakfast, lunch and dinner at the hospitals,” one of the tour guides said.

Students also visited the SCC building, which houses a simulation center that prepares students for trauma, birth and other medical cases, and lets them practice skills like IV insertion and suturing.

They also talked to current students and asked questions about their education and life in Springfield. The older students emphasized how hands-on their learning is, since neither CoxHealth nor Mercy have many residents.

“You don’t have to compete with residents and interns to get surgeries, which is really nice,” said Jihane “Jiji” Oufattole, a fourth-year student. “The attendings you’ll work with have all volunteered for this. They want to work with you, they want to teach you.”

Mercy does not have residents, and CoxHealth only has residents in family medicine. This allows medical students to get a robust clinical experience by working directly with the attending doctors, often one-on-one.

Many of the fourth-year students, including Oufattole, love the experience of functioning as the first assistant in surgery and procedures. While she’s still in the process of applying to residency programs, she believes her experience will distinguish her among the rest of the applicants.

As for life in Springfield, it’s a city with a small-town feel, the current students said, praising the quality and wide selection of restaurants, as well as the amenities found around the city.

“The parks here are really nice,” said another Springfield student, Matthew Gao. “I’ve played pickleball with my preceptors. You should check out the courts when you come here.”

The bus ride back was abuzz with excitement, with the first-year students exchanging what they most looked forward to about Springfield and their last years of medical school. Some raved about the lower cost of living, while others marveled at the idea of gaining so much experience firsthand.

For Logan Mays, one of the first years, the idea of being able to work with an attending in just a few years is very appealing.

“Having toured, I’m even more excited to start to continue with medical school than I was starting,” Mays said. “It’s given me that butterflies feeling all over again, that I’m in medical school. That exciting feeling.”