About 60 percent of the graduating students from LSU Health Sciences Center-New Orleans chose to remain in Louisiana to complete their medical training, according to a March 17 news release.
“The high number of LSU graduates choosing to remain in Louisiana again this year and those who chose LSU residency programs is a testament to the quality of both the undergraduate and graduate medical education programs here at [LSUHSC-New Orleans],” LSUHSC-New Orleans Chancellor Larry Hollier said in the release.
Hollier said the institution is gratified by the students’ confidence in LSU and its programming.
The residency programs also accepted 132 new residents who will begin their programs next summer.
“We are again pleased to provide the majority of new physicians for our state,” Steve Nelson, dean of the School of Medicine at LSUHSC-New Orleans, said in the release. “We are delighted to keep so many of our own graduates here at home while also attracting quality residents from other schools.”
The 104 medical students of the 178-person graduating class identified their decision to stay in-state by participating in the National Resident Match Program, a survey conducted annually by the National Resident Matching Program.
NRMP is the primary system that partners applicants to residency programs with available positions at teaching hospitals and academic health centers, the release said.
Forty-four percent of LSUHSC medical graduates are going into primary care this year, according to the release. Primary care specialities encompass family practice, internal medicine, medicine-preliminary, obstetrics-gynecology, pediatrics and medicine-pediatrics.
“Our very successful Rural Physicians Program is addressing the need for greater numbers of primary care physicians for our state,” Nelson said.
The Rural Physicians Program is a course tract where students who agree to go into primary care upon completion of medical school and agree to practice in a rural area will have their tuition paid, according to Dr. Kim Edward LeBlanc, professor, head of the Department of Family Medicine and director of Rural Education.
LeBlanc said for every 12 months of tuition paid by LSUHSC, the medical student must practice 15 months in a rural area. For example, if LSU pays the student’s full four-year tuition, the student must practice for five years.
He said this program is vital, as nearly one-third of the state’s population resides in a rural area.
LSUHSC medical graduates training in other states will be transferring to prestigious programs like Harvard-Massachusetts General, Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, Duke and Vanderbilt, among several others.
“You have to realize a certain percent will go out of state, but LSUHSC-New Orleans is a historically wonderful producer of physicians,” LeBlanc said. “LSUHSC has produced about 70 percent of Louisiana physicians.”
 
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Contact Sydni Dunn at [email protected]