Students at Georgia’s newest medical college, Georgia Campus – Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, are well past the mid-point in their first year of medical school.

Their thoughts are turning to the future when they can leave the classrooms and labs and move into clinical settings. Though they have another full year of classroom work before clinical rotations begin, the excitement is beginning to build. Partnerships are now being developed with area hospitals for clinical rotations for the third and fourth year of medical school, a process that will continue as classes continue to grow.

Early next year students will be selecting communities and hospitals where they would like to have these clinical experiences. Statistics show hat primary care physicians often tend to establish their practices in communities where they participate in core clinical rotations and receive residency training.

The College opened in August when 86 students arrived on campus at 625 Old Peachtree Road in Suwanee for orientation and the beginning of classes. Since then, it has been a hectic pace for students, faculty and staff alike.

Joseph C. Mazzolado, D.O., of Floyd Family Medicine Residency in Rome, demonstrates the techniques of an eye examination to a group of first-year medical students at Georgia Campus – Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in Suwanne, GA, during a recent primary care skills exercise.

The College is the only branch campus of the more than 100-year-old Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, one of the oldest and largest medical schools in the country. Although osteopathic physicians (D.O.s) may work in any specialty, just as M.D.s, most tend to focus on primary care and that is the emphasis of the school’s curriculum.

Georgia ranks 39th in the nation in the number of physicians per 100,000 residents, according to the most recent figures from the Kaiser Family Foundation. These numbers point to the need for additional physicians as the state’s population continues to grow and age.

"Our mission in Georgia," says Matthew Schure, PhD, president and chief executive officer of the two-campus college, "is to recruit students, primarily from the south, educate them in the south and encourage them to remain in the south to practice osteopathic medicine."

Eighty-eight percent of the student body calls the south home and thirty-four percent are from Georgia. The school had more than 1,750 applications for the 86 seats available in its inaugural class, and school officials expect more than 2,000 applications for the Class of 2010, according to John Fleischmann, EdD, campus executive officer.

Paul Evans, DO, vice dean of the college and the chief academic officer for the campus, pointed with pride to the progress the students have made this year and the vision the College has for the future. We are delighted to be in Georgia and we are delighted to be in Gwinnett County. We have been warmly received by both the community, other medical schools and medical centers."