Medex Program

The Dartmouth Medical School has received a $986,435 federal grant to train former military medical corpsmen as physicians' assistants in a collaborative effort with the New Hampshire Medical Society to improve primary medical care throughout Northern New England.

The two-year Medex Demonstration Program, patterned after a successful experimental program in Washington State, will be run in conjunction with three others across the nation to determine the viability of the concept. Essentially Medex is a physicianoriented training project dedicated to civilian utilization of the medical skills of highly trained military medical corpsmen in an attempt to ease the critical shortage of trained medical manpower and to make health care services more readily available.

An initial class of 22 Medex trainees will start their retraining program next January 1 at the Dartmouth Medical School. The three-month academic program, supplementing the 600 to 2000 hours of military service training which medical corpsmen usually receive, places heavy emphasis upon pediatrics, adult medicine, geriatrics, medical history-taking, and physical examination.

Next April each Medex will begin a year of preceptorship under the close supervision of a physician in private practice. Each will be paid a stipend of about $6,000 and, when the on-the-job training period is completed, it is anticipated the successful Medex will stay on with his physician-preceptor.

Dr. Bella Strauss, Associate Professor of Medicine, has supervised organization of the Dartmouth program. Other principal staff members are Dr. Nicholas Danforth, project director; Mr. Casey Ploeg, a former Navy corpsman, associate director; and Dr. Robert J. Chapman, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry.