Training doctors for the Alaska wilderness may take a special breed: guess again if you thought all physician training is the same.

• Author: Komancheck, Wendy

To want to become a doctor in Alaska is a little bit different than wanting to become a doctor in the Lower 48. An Alaska doctor needs to be willing to work long hours, sometimes without the modern amenities that a Pennsylvanian or a Californian doctor would have in an emergency. Granted, most doctors who care for patients in remote Alaska villages are hired by local hospitals. Yet they need to receive extra training in certain emergency situations that doctors in the Lower 48 don't have to deal with on a regular basis.

THE PROGRAM

WWAMI--the consortium of Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho-through the University of Washington's Medical School, trains doctors to work in the extreme rural areas of these states.

According to its Web site: www.uw medicine.org/Education/WWAMI, its purpose is to "provide access to publicly supported medical education across the five-state region. The UW School of Medicine maintains a dean's office in each of the five states. For Alaska, Tom Nighswander, M.D., is the assistant dean and WWAMI's Alaska coordinator.

For the past 34 years, WWAMI has been training students through a "decentralized form of medical education. A significant part of any given student's education occurs within the WWAMI region in communities utilizing a combination of both full-time and volunteer teachers," according to the Web site.

LIMITED SPACE

The program reserves a set amount of seats per state in the consortium. Alaska reserves 10 seats for its medical program.

Dr. Dennis Valenzeno, who is the director and professor of WWAMI's Biomedical Program, also serves as dean for Medical and Premedical Programs with the University of Alaska Anchorage. He says that first-year medical students finish their initial year at the University of Maska Anchorage. Then, they return to the University of Washington, along with students from other states in the consortium, for their second year. For their third and fourth years, students have a choice to return to Alaska or any of the other five state regions, to complete "a series of short, usually six-week, clerkship experiences," says Valenzeno. "An Alaska Track allows students to complete nearly all of Year Three and Year Four in Maska."

Fortunately, according to Valenzeno, of the 180 students from the five-state WWAMI program, many choose Alaska as the place to complete their year three- and year-four clerkships. "That exposure draws a few more to practice here-two to three graduates per...