About

The Family Medicine Scholars Training and Admission program (fmSTAT) is a unique program with two components:

1. The dual admissions process is designed to identify and select individuals who come to medical school intending to be family physicians.

2. The four-year curricular program provides participants with tailored experiences that nurture, develop, and support this select group of medical students toward their family medicine career goal.

Benefits

• Deliberate placement with specially selected family physician teachers
• Community of peers with shared values
• 1:1 family physician mentor throughout the four-year experience
• Core family medicine content through semi-annual retreat and seminar sessions
• Optional paid summer research between first and second year
• Professional development: potential for funded participation in state/national conferences, networking assistance, letters of support for personal/professional opportunities 
• Financial scholarships
• fmScholars' designation in the Medical Student Performance Evaluation (Dean's) letter for residency application

Expectations

• Successful completion of general School of Medicine requirements
• Attend annual required fmSTAT learning activities
• Engage in a scholarly project and presentation in 4th year
• Complete a family medicine 4th year elective
• Apply to match in a Family Medicine residency

fmSTAT is a dual admission program to the VCU School of Medicine.  The admissions component of fmSTAT is designed to identify and select individuals who are committed to a career in family medicine upon matriculation.

Applying to fmSTAT

The opportunity to apply to fmSTAT is automatically extended to a select group of VCU School of Medicine applicants during the supplemental application process.

Those who receive offers, and wish to apply, complete the online fmSTAT application. The School of Medicine and fmSTAT applications are reviewed by family physicians who participate in the School of Medicine admissions process.

If recommended, the fmSTAT Educational Director will call applicants with an invitation to interview. In addition to the standard School of Medicine interview, fmSTAT candidates, have an information session to learn more about the program and separate one-on-one interviews regarding their family medicine interest. 

fmSTAT emulates the School of Medicine admissions process with rolling offer dates. 8-10 fmScholars are selected each academic year from those accepted to VCU School of Medicine.

fmSTAT includes a 4-year longitudinal experience during which students explore key concepts and topics "through a family medicine lens” all the while keeping personal values and core values of family medicine in mind. 

This is accomplished in part by required participation in two seminars and two retreats each academic year. Learning activities are designed to be engaging (e.g. panels, debates, group work, etc.) Each session includes good food, enthusiastic faculty, and time to connect with other fmScholars.  Foundational to fmSTAT is having these experiences with fmSTAT peers at all levels of training.

This content encompasses:

Topics rotate to assure to avoid redundancy and coverage of the various aspects over the course of four years in the program. 

Seminars are in the evening (one per semester) on campus and include dinner.

Both retreats are on Saturdays and held off campus.  The fall retreat includes an optional overnight stay; the spring retreat is a day-long event.  Retreats provide time for meaningful connection with other fmScholars and the opportunity to "dig deeper" into the program content.

Mentorship is a cornerstone of fmSTAT. Each fmScholar is paired with a family physician whose role is to support and nurture the student through medical school. Mentors are very carefully selected and oriented to the program structure and expectations. The "matching" of fmScholars to mentors is based on getting to know students through the fmSTAT interview process and a pre-matriculation survey. Mentors and mentees meet each other during the first year of medical school with the intent of developing a relationship over the course of training. The mentorship is designed as a 1:1 relationship initiated and maintained by both mentor and student with the support of the program directors.

Based on expressed interest, there is typically at least 1-2 orchestrated (optional) group events enabling mentors and students to get together to socialize. 

Informal connections among scholars has been highly valued since our program’s inception.  In 2024, we will launch Scholars Supporting Scholars (S3) - small groups comprised of fmScholars from each year to further foster community, support, and guidance among student colleagues. 

Program Directors

fmSTAT Co-directors, Judy Gary, M.Ed., and Carolyn Peel, M.D., provide ongoing support for participants. With input from other faculty and  students, they develop the curriculum, plan and evaluate all program events and hand-select mentors and preceptors to work with each fmScholar.

“We quickly discovered that the relationship aspects of fmSTAT were the most important part of the program.  Witnessing the support that students demonstrate for one another and the sense of community are inspiring.” 

Family Physician Preceptors

The Department of Family Medicine and Population Health involves nearly 200 family physicians across the Commonwealth of Virginia to help train VCU medical students.  Since its founding in 1970, the department has intentionally selected community family physicians (preceptors) -- many who are alumni, to serve as teachers and role models allowing students to experience family medicine where it is practiced most often. As a benefit of the fmSTAT program, fmScholars are preferentially placed with preceptors with the students' particular interests and needs in mind for all of their clinical experiences.

Mentors

Each fmScholar has a specifically selected family physician mentor who supports his/her scholars' personal and professional development. Though many mentors teach medical students, care is taken to avoid having a mentor directly teach or evaluate his or her mentee. See Mentorship section for more information.

The greatest benefit of fmSTAT is the community of students who share similar goals. fmScholars have a variety of personal interests and envision doing a myriad or combination of things, but all aspire to be family physicians taking care of individuals, families and communities!

Our fmScholars' career interests:

• Be a community leader and active advocate of public and preventative health
• Work in a progressive and comprehensive patient-centered clinic
• Live and work in a rural community
• Concentrate on global health
• Focus on sports medicine
• Serve military families
• Join a suburban group practice with a focus on adolescents and women
• Work with low income families, underserved care, refugees, underserved minorities, recent immigrants
• Provide women's health & FM/OB care
• Be a medical educator/work in academics
• Provide chronic disease and geriatric care
• Practice in an outpatient setting
• Start a direct primary care practice
• Be a medical director/physician at a community health center
• Provide gender affirming care
• Concentrate on the addiction medicine
• Work in practices which focus on lifestyle and integrative medicine