Medical student Rachel Ott (second from left) listens while her teacher, Charles Nyhus, MD ’79, talks with a patient at Central Dakota Clinic in Harvey, ND.  Third-year medical students learn from doctors, who hold UND faculty appointments, during a required, eight-week family medicine rotation. Nyhus, a family physician, is one of three brothers who graduated from the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences in the 1970s.

Whether it’s health care, preventive medicine, studies of diseases and disease processes, or maintaining and enhancing access to rural health care services, the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences touches the lives of North Dakotans and other residents of the Upper Midwest.

Our alumni – graduates of medical and allied health professional programs – provide care to hundreds of thousands of people in this region every day, every hour.  Their knowledge, skills and attitudes concerning the quality of that care were formed and fostered at UND.

Our faculty and staff are dedicated to teaching, research and service aimed at improving and advancing the quality of life for all people of this region and elsewhere – whether those people realize it or not.

Community-based medical education
Because UND is a community-based medical school, education permeates the health care system in North Dakota, and the quality of care is enhanced because of it. The UND medical school relies heavily on physicians and other health care professionals, practicing in clinics and hospitals throughout the state and region, to help educate and train our students.

Promoting primary care and rural health have long been critical emphases at the school, and programs have been in place for more than 30 years to address those needs and issues surrounding them.  For example, medical education takes place not only in the four largest cities in North Dakota – with populations ranging from 100,000 to 35,000 – but also in much smaller towns such as Harvey (pop. 2,300) where Charles Nyhus, MD ’79 (Family Medicine Residency ’82), weaves teaching into his care of patients.