LifeBridge Health will establish campus for GW med students
Sinai Hospital of Baltimore will house a regional medical campus for medical students attending The George Washington University, under an agreement announced Wednesday.
LifeBridge Health, which operates Sinai, reached an agreement with George Washington to establish a campus at the hospital this spring for the university’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
The program will be offered to thirdand fourth-year medical students who choose to spend their clinical years at the Baltimore hospital training in a community-focused health system. It’s expected that some students will continue training in LifeBridge graduate medical education programs or become LifeBridge physicians, the announcement said.
The partnership will expand the medical school’s presence outside Washington, said Barbara L. Bass, the dean of the medical school and a professor of surgery. It also will guarantee students access to clinical training in an environment that differs from the main campus experience in downtown Washington, D.C., but complements the school’s clinical public health-focused curriculum, Bass said in the announcement.
“We have used Sinai Hospital as a clinical rotation site for several years; our students have received excellent clinical training and
they have highly rated their educational experiences,” said Bass, who also serves as the university’s vice president for health affairs and CEO of The GW Medical Faculty Associates.
A regional medical campus is a distinct and separate location from a medical school’s central campus, where students spend one or more years of their training. It will enable a cohort of up to 30 medical students to complete the first two years of classroom education at the university’s Foggy Bottom campus followed by a full year of rotations
during the third year and specialty electives during the fourth year at Sinai Hospital.
Neil Meltzer, LifeBridge’s president and CEO, said the students will benefit from “cutting-edge innovation and unique learning experiences.”
The first group of students will start in the spring. Teaching faculty within the George Washington campus at LifeBridge will receive faculty appointments at the medical school.
Besides Sinai in Northwest Baltimore, LifeBridge operates Grace Medical Center
in Southwest Baltimore, Northwest Hospital in Randallstown, Carroll Hospital in Westminster, Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital next to Sinai, and LifeBridge Health & Fitness.
“LifeBridge Health, and particularly Sinai Hospital, has a proud history in medical education with dozens of medical residents actively working and training here each year,” said Matthew Poffenroth, senior vice president and chief physician executive for LifeBridge Health and president of LifeBridge Health Medical Group.