Hershey, Pa. -- Penn State College of Medicine today announced that its current 16-year academic affiliation with Lehigh Valley Health Network will end in December 2010.
The affiliation provides clinical rotations, also known as clerkships, for Penn State medical students. Penn State students engaged in clinical rotations or scheduled to begin medical clerkships at Lehigh Valley will be unaffected by the change in relationship and will complete their rotations there as planned. Approximately two-dozen students are in clerkships at Lehigh Valley Health Network at any given time during the year. The clerkships typically last one to two months. Both Penn State and Lehigh Valley anticipate that Penn State students will continue to have the opportunity to participate in educational experiences at Lehigh Valley after 2010.
As part of its five-year strategic plan, the College of Medicine and Penn State University are actively involved in developing a regional medical campus in State College, Pennsylvania to expand the educational experience for medical students, residents, graduate students and post doctoral scholars. Ultimately, the Lehigh Valley medical student clerkships will be incorporated into clinical rotations at the new regional campus at State College, the Medical Center in Hershey or one of the College of Medicine’s other six affiliated clerkship programs.
“Our regional medical campus in State College will ultimately position us to increase opportunities for medical student clerkships,” says Harold L. Paz, M.D., dean of the College of Medicine, who also serves as the chief executive officer of Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and Penn State’s senior vice president for health affairs. “We are enthusiastic about the partnerships being developed, which will enable Penn State to greatly enrich the educational experience of our students and ultimately address the projected demand for more doctors in the coming decades.”
Lehigh Valley Health Network will enter into a new academic affiliation with the University of South Florida when its agreement with Penn State College of Medicine concludes in 2010.
“While we are disappointed that our long partnership with Lehigh Valley Health Network must come to an end, we are grateful for the network’s contributions to help us educate the next generation of physicians,” says Paz.
The affiliation with Lehigh Valley Health Network is one of several formal educational relationships between hospitals and health care providers throughout Pennsylvania and the College of Medicine to provide clerkships to help train its medical students. Other affiliated clerkship programs include York Hospital, Holy Spirit Health System in Camp Hill, the Lebanon VA Medical Center, Harrisburg-based PinnacleHealth System, Reading Hospital and Medical Center, and Wilkes-Barre-based Wyoming Valley Health Care System, as well as Mount Nittany Medical Center and Centre Medical and Surgical Associates in State College.