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Dear Friends,
This week, a dozen of my
legislative colleagues and I
became University of
Maryland medical students
for a day, just as
UM's
groundbreaking human tests
of swine flu vaccine
got underway.
Our briefing went to new
heights as we viewed the
Baltimore skyline from UM
Shock Trauma's heliport,
right.
We donned white lab coats
and learned a lot
from Medical School Dean E.
Albert Reece and other UM
experts, who briefed us on
wide-ranging topics,
including the following:
First, UM is
leading nationwide vaccine
trials against the H1N1 flu
virus (formerly referred to as
swine flu) in an effort to make
the vaccine available to the
public before the fall flu
season.
Second, annual tuition at
UM medical school is $23,917 for
in-state students and $43,960
for out-of-state students,
and graduates leave with an
average debt of $142,002. More
than 62 percent of graduates go
on to non-primary
fields. Meanwhile, barely over a
third choose primary-care
fields, such as pediatrics,
family practice, internal
medicine, Ob/Gyn and Med-Peds.
Unfortunately, the trend is that
fewer medical students are going
into primary-care, especially in
rural areas.
Finally, UM's Shock Trauma
facility is widely recognized
for hyperbaric therapy and for
its hyperbaric chamber, which
can be used to treat such things
as decompression illness, carbon
monoxide poisoning and
non-healing skin grafts and
flaps. |
