Tuesday, May 2, 2017

LUCOM holds OMM clinic for Liberty and Lynchburg Community

Mon, 01 May 2017Asa Keimig | Marketing and Public Relations Coordinator

Liberty University College of Osteopathic Medicine (LUCOM) hosted a student-doctor led Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM) clinic for members of Liberty University and the Lynchburg community on selected March and April dates at the Center for Medical and Health Sciences (CMHS).

The OMM clinic provided student-doctors with one of their first encounters with actual patients and the opportunity to put into practice the curriculum that they have been taught over the past two years. “As osteopathic medical students, part of their medical training involves Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine,” said James Kribs, DO, associate professor of Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine. “Not every patient comes with a medical or surgical problem but sometimes the problem they have is a structural one, so while our students are trained to evaluate and manage medical and surgical cases, they also evaluate if a structural issue is contributing to what the patient is experiencing.”

Under the supervision of LUCOM faculty, student-doctors were able to treat patients with disorders such as headaches, neck pain, back pain, middle ear infections, and even asthma.

“This exposure is valuable for them, not only to utilize and refine their osteopathic manipulative treatment skills they have been learning these past two years, but it also helps to build their doctor-patient skills,” said Dr. Kribs.

The clinic welcomed over 40 patients from Liberty and Lynchburg. The annual community outreach event provided an excellent dynamic of students gaining experience while continuing to introduce OMM to the community. “Osteopathic Medicine is still relatively new in the Southeastern US,” said Dr. Kribs “In a small way, events like this introduce the community to the expanding and unique care that is to come and in the end, both the student-doctors and the community enjoyed and benefited from the event.”

During the clinic, student-doctors focused on patient history and the physical exam, and then presented their case and treatment plans to their supervising physicians who also evaluated the patients. Students practiced with documentation and privacy-protected record keeping, giving them experience from start-to-finish in a patient encounter.

This was an incredible opportunity to practice what we have learned over the first two years of medical school,” said student-doctor Rachel Tanas, Class of 2019. “It helped enforce what we had learned in a classroom setting but with a real patient that we could evaluate, treat, and even follow up with.”