Southern Illinois University School of Medicine: A Comprehensive Overview

Southern Illinois University (SIU) School of Medicine, established in 1970, plays a crucial role in addressing the healthcare needs of central and southern Illinois. This article provides a detailed overview of the institution, covering its history, mission, curriculum, research, and community engagement.

History and Mission

The Southern Illinois University School of Medicine was founded in 1970 following a bill passed by the Illinois General Assembly, which called for the establishment of a second state medical school in downstate Illinois. The school's primary mission is to assist the people of central and southern Illinois in meeting their healthcare needs through education, patient care, research, and community service. SIU Medicine is a publicly assisted medical school and clinical practice with a focus on the healthcare needs of downstate Illinois. For over half a century, SIU Medicine has been a leading innovator in medical education and a key player in the development of the regional academic medical center in Springfield.

The school graduated an advanced standing class in 1975 and its charter class of all Illinois students in 1976. Today, the School encompasses a complete sequence of medical education beginning with the M.D. degree.

Campuses and Affiliations

SIU School of Medicine has two main campuses: one in Carbondale, where first-year students spend their time, and another in Springfield, where the remaining years of the MD program are conducted. The School of Medicine is part of the Southern Illinois University system, which includes a campus in Edwardsville as well as the flagship in Carbondale. SIU was once the only medical school in Illinois with its main campus outside of Chicago or its suburbs until the Carle Illinois College of Medicine was formed in 2018 (although the University of Illinois at Chicago does maintain satellites in Peoria and Rockford).

Training programs in Springfield are primarily supported by Memorial Medical Center (507 beds) and HSHS St. John's Hospital (431 beds). These hospitals have a combined total of over 45,000 admissions and over 123,000 emergency room visits annually. Services include the only Level 1 trauma center in the area between Peoria and St. Louis and a regional burn center. SIU also has affiliations with hospitals in Quincy, Decatur, and Carbondale.

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Curriculum and Educational Approach

SIU School of Medicine is recognized nationally for its innovative teaching and testing techniques. The medical education curriculum has brought the school national attention. Since students are not evaluated in competition with their peers, they are stimulated to cooperate with one another, a situation that more closely resembles what takes place in the actual practice of medicine. The school was early to incorporate problem-based learning (PBL) into their curricula and "standardized patients" for medical student testing purposes. SIU students begin care of patients in a clinical setting within the first two weeks of classes. By the end of their first trimester, they are tested on their ability to obtain medical histories from, examine, and diagnose the diseases simulated by standardized patients.

Problem-Based Learning

SIU-Med employs problem-based learning, which involves using small groups of students, along with a faculty mentor. The students are presented with a clinical scenario and must approach it as if they were trying to diagnose and treat a real patient. When the students face basic science and clinical problems that they do not know, they incorporate these issues into a list and divide the list amongst themselves for self-directed learning. At their next faculty-supervised meeting, the students teach each other what they have learned, with input also provided on the topics by the faculty member. Each case also has set learning issues, so that all students in all the small groups within the class learn the objectives planned by the faculty in both basic and clinical science for that particular case. Each case is designed to be completed over three meetings lasting around 9 hours in total. This style of learning is also used with traditional lectures and laboratory sessions over the first two years of medical school. Simulated patients and nurse educators are also used to assist with learning clinical skills. Since it is more interactive, these methods promote better problem-solving skills useful in real life situations than traditional lecture-based learning.

Dual Degree Programs

The school offers an M.D.-J.D. dual degree program in conjunction with the SIU School of Law and an M.D.-MPH degree with the SIU College of Health and Human Sciences.

Admissions

Each class comprises 72 students. SIU School of Medicine does not accept out-of- state students for the MD program. They have a strong emphasis on serving the people of central and southern Illinois and look to find students who identify with that mission. Preference for admission is given to applicants from central and southern Illinois and other underserved (inner-city, rural) portions of the state.

To do well on the MCAT, students should have taken at least one year each of Biology, Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Physics, English, and Math, the last of which should have included some Statistics. The MCAT is required and scores must be no more than two years old. For applicants who have taken the exam on multiple occasions, the most recent set of scores is considered.

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Residency Programs

SIU has approximately 325 resident physicians training in 17 medical specialty areas. The School’s residency programs include dermatology, emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, medicine/psychiatry, neurology, neurosurgery, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry, radiology and six surgical specialties.

Research

Research at SIU School of Medicine consists of numerous projects underway in 100-plus laboratories. Notable areas of research include hearing loss, including tinnitus, noise-induced and age-related hearing loss, Alzheimer's Disease and aging. One of the other leading areas of research at SIU is in oncology, with the Simmons Cancer Institute at SIU being the largest oncology facility in Illinois outside of Chicago. Ongoing research includes projects on basic molecular mechanism of tumorigenesis, identifying molecular biomarkers for early detection of cancer, developing an effective vaccine against herpes simplex and identifying targets for molecular level cancer treatment.

The Springfield Combined Laboratory Facility is a five-story building, and an additional facility that houses immunology and virology laboratories and a biomedical research imaging suite.

Research Controversies

A Herpes Simplex Virus vaccine developed at SIU School of Medicine came to be at the center of a 2017 controversy over human trials. Clinical trials were conducted without institutional review board oversight and approval, and in apparent violation of SIU and federal rules for medical research. The findings were rejected from peer-review academic publication for both scientific and ethical deficiencies. Investigations were later launched by the St.

SIU HealthCare

To complement the hospital-based setting, SIU HealthCare, the ambulatory clinics of SIU School of Medicine, employ nearly 300 full-time physicians who supervise more than 477,000 clinic visits per year in our primary and specialty care clinics as well as approximately 145,000 hospital visits. The School of Medicine, its outpatient clinics SIU HealthCare, and its teaching hospitals, Memorial Medical Center and St. John’s Hospital, make Springfield an expanding academic medical center with considerable clinical, educational and research expertise.

Community Engagement

SIU has additional affiliations with hospitals in Quincy, Decatur, and Carbondale. Outreach clinics go to 100 sites in 46 communities. SIU is a national leader in the percentage of graduates who enter primary care.

Population Science and Policy

A new focus in Population Science and Policy is taking SIU SOM’s mission of improving health beyond the patient exam room to address the social determinants of health. By partnering with communities, SIU SOM is finding ways to improve the health of populations. The Department of Population Science and Policy (PSP) is an interdisciplinary department at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (SIU SOM). The Department works to understand the challenges of people in central and southern Illinois and provides innovative, sustainable solutions to improve health in rural and underserved communities.

The Department is divided into three divisions working together to improve health outcomes: Human and Community Development, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Health System Science. Human and Community Development focuses on a community-based participatory approach, mixed methods research, and implementation science to address the health needs of communities. Epidemiology and Biostatistics is a more traditional, hypothesis-driven division which collects, examines, and analyzes quantitative data concerning health outcomes. Health System Science focuses on forming and analyzing policy recommendations around health disparities in Illinois. All three divisions work with PSP’s education team to create a population science and policy curriculum to educate a new generation of physicians to practice through the lens of population health.

The Department’s ultimate goal is engaging communities, providing opportunities for improving health equity and creating sustainable solutions for residents in central and southern Illinois.

Medical Library

The SIU School of Medicine Medical Library houses more than 108,000 volumes, 3,300 print and electronic periodicals, 3,900 audiovisual programs, and a collection of historical medical documents.

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