On April 15, the medical staff of Providence Alaska Medical Center unanimously supported full funding of Alaska’s medical school. Alaska doctors are as partisan as Alaskans, generally; their undivided support of the school is remarkable.
Our medical school is a 45-year partnership of Alaska with Washington, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, or WWAMI. Its cost per doctor trained is among the lowest in America, and most of its graduates spend their lives caring for Alaskans, both in the Bush and in the cities.
My story is typical of 119 other graduates actively practicing in Alaska. I was born at the old Providence hospital downtown, graduated from West High and entered WWAMI at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1979. My first post-graduate job was the Indian Health Service in Barrow. After four years of Alaska Public Health Service, I trained in orthopedic surgery and have operated in Anchorage since then.
Alaska’s medical school remains critical to my ongoing education, surgical practice and research into the improving the safety of hip, knee and shoulder replacement. I am unpaid WWAMI faculty: Classroom, ward and cadaver lab interaction with medical students and residents keeps me sharp. The academic milieu of UAA/WWAMI has facilitated my research.
— Stephen S. Tower, MD
Anchorage
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