$1.5 Million Gift Establishes Education Center at UAMS-Northwest

The Willard and Pat Walker Charitable Foundation on Tuesday presented $1.5 million to the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences Northwest Campus in Fayetteville.

The gift will fund a renovation project to establish the Willard and Pat Walker Student Clinical Education Center.

The endeavor will transform roughly 8,000 SF space on the first floor of the UAMS-Northwest facility into clinical training rooms, conference space and a nurses’ station, as well as provide the required technology and audio-visual components.

When complete, the center will provide the clinical education on the UAMS-Northwest campus instead of having to send students to the UAMS campus in Little Rock.

The gift by the Walker foundation, announced by executive director Debbie Walker, brings the total amount contributed in support of the UAMS-Northwest campus since it opened in 2009 to nearly $7 million.

“Almost all of that, if not all of it, has come from this region of the state,” said UAMS chancellor Dan Rahn. “The citizens of Northwest Arkansas have provided tremendous support for this campus.”

Peter O. Kohler, vice chancellor for UAMS Northwest Arkansas Region, said the renovation project should be complete by the middle of 2013.

The center will include a clinical skills center and a student continuity clinic. Medical students will work with volunteers — known as standardized patients — who are trained to simulate an illness during an examination or interview. They will also follow real patients throughout their training at UAMS.

“To have this capacity to interact with standardized patients and receive filmed feedback as part of the educational experience is so much better than what we had,” Rahn told the audience at Tuesday’s morning news conference, recounting similar training he had on a limited basis during his time at the Yale University School of Medicine in Connecticut in the 1970s.

“We went around in groups to interview patients and we had maybe one episode of taking a patient’s history, supervised by a faculty member, and then we were on our own. And I think I had one physical exam that was directly observed.

“Having a center that addresses knowledge acquisition and experience acquisition … it’s far better to do it this way. It’s incredibly important and this gift is going to enhance the health care that we can provide to the citizens of Arkansas.”

Students in all academic programs at UAMS-Northwest will use the center. Enrollment numbers from the fall 2011 semester totaled approximately 135 students and medical residents. Eventual enrollment is anticipated to range from 250 to 300.

In his remarks Tuesday, Rahn also noted the Walker family’s continued support of UAMS, which totals more than $48 million.

“Virtually every center of excellence at UAMS bears the Walker name,” he said. “The growing UAMS-Northwest campus will play an increasingly important role in the years ahead in our ability to produce more health care professionals to meet the already high demand for care in our state.”