Abilene, Kansas, Faith Ericson, a student at the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Salina, watched intently as an 84-year-old man who had been experiencing dizziness stepped onto a treadmill for a stress test. The patient appeared to be in remarkable health, but the clinic’s supervising physician explained that since he has a pacemaker, she wanted to make sure his dizziness wasn’t a symptom of a larger issue. As the treadmill gained speed, everyone in the room commented on how the many times they have seen the patient in the town’s new walking path is really paying off — he easily hit the target heart rate and maintained pace for three minutes while the machine gathered data. After the test was completed, Ericson and Brown huddled for several minutes to review the results.

This appointment was one of hundreds Ericson was part of during the six weeks she spent with Brown in the summer of 2022 at the small clinic in Abilene — a town of about 6,500 in central Kansas. It was part of her experience in the KU School of Medicine’s Summer Training Option in Rural Medicine (STORM) program. As part of the program, medical students are dispersed to small towns throughout Kansas to gain hands-on health care experience in rural communities.

“The STORM program is an early rural immersion experience for students heading into their second year of medical school and allows students to have one-on-one experiences with a rural physician in a primary care setting,” explained Neesa Butler, program manager for the KU School of Medicine Office of Rural Medical Education.

Butler said giving medical students hands-on clinical experience early in their education and exposing them to authentic experience of rural health care providers — the rewards and the challenges — is at the heart of the STORM program.

“We hope students will get interested in rural medicine and hands-on clinical experiences,” Butler said. “We’ve seen success stories where students build close relationships with preceptors and go back to the same rural community for future rotations, and many of our current rural providers also participated in the STORM option when they were in medical school.”

Ericson was born and raised in a rural community herself. Growing up on a farm outside Logan, Kansas, she experienced firsthand the shortage of rural physicians.

“My grandparents also lived out in the middle of nowhere, and the nearest hospital was 30 miles away. Their specialists — cardiologists and oncologists — were six hours away in Kansas City,” Ericson said. “When my grandpa had a heart attack, they had to fly him out. It was treated like a price you had to pay for living where you wanted to.”

Ericson said she was a very decisive child and planned from a young age to become a doctor. She was curious about how things were put together, often dissecting bugs on her family’s farm to see what they were made of. Pairing that with her love for people and helping others, she saw the opportunity to treat entire families through family medicine.

“It’s something I realized I could use anywhere, and people are always in need of it. It’s valuable wherever I go,” Ericson said. “I’ve always been passionate about underserved areas, whatever that may look like. And when I started to take more ownership of my faith, I felt like God gave me a lens to see that he gave me that passion to be a doctor for a reason.”

Ericson attended the University of Kansas in Lawrence for her undergraduate studies, majoring in biology/pre-med and minoring in German and is currently part of the class of 2025 at the KU School of Medicine-Salina.

Starting in high school, Ericson looked for opportunities to learn more about the experiences of rural health providers. She spent time shadowing doctors in rural clinics as a junior and senior in high school. During her undergraduate education, she connected with a family doctor in Ottawa, Kansas, who served as a mentor and provided insight into the role of a health care provider in a small community, as well as how to balance practicing family medicine in a rural area with family life.

As an undergraduate at KU, Ericson got involved with Scholars in Rural Health, a KU School of Medicine program that identifies undergrads from rural Kansas who are interested in building successful future careers as primary care physicians serving underserved rural areas throughout Kansas. She was set up with a physician mentor and put in a number of required hours of shadowing each semester from her sophomore year on, which helped her manage her expectations about what family medicine in rural communities actually entailed.

It was while she was shadowing her mentor in Plainville, Kansas, that Ericson first learned about STORM from students participating in the program at the same clinic. She continued to hear about it throughout her time with Scholars of Rural Health, and once she started medical school she was encouraged to participate by fellow students.

“When I got to medical school, all of the second-year students said, ‘You have to do it, it’s so great!’ And especially because we don’t get a ton of clinical experience for the first two years,” Ericson said.

Ericson’s preceptor at the Heartland Health Care Clinic in Abilene was Megan Brown, M.D. Brown is also a graduate of the KU School of Medicine and participated in the STORM program — although it operated under a different name at the time. Her experience as a student motivated her to provide the same knowledge to today’s medical students.

“I’ve always enjoyed working with students, and I really appreciated the experiences I had [with the STORM program] as a student, especially since it’s the one rotation where I got to be a little more independent before going into residency,” Brown said “I got to take the lead on patients, more so than in any other rotation. It was such a great experience, and it’s important to me that other students get to have similar experiences. I ended up taking on a student my first year in practice, and I’ve mentored students ever since.”

The STORM program started in 1992 with two students and has grown to between 30 and 40 students participating each summer, with preceptors in around 50 different communities throughout Kansas. Unlike other rural rotations, the STORM program is for student who have just completed their first year of medical school.

For many medical students, the STORM program is their first clinical experience. Their excitement and enthusiasm to learn makes STORM students among Brown’s favorite to have at her practice.

“After their first year of medical school, students haven’t had many clinical rotations yet, so they’re always really excited when they get here,” Brown said. “And because they’ve only had one year of medical school, they’ve only learned half of the body systems, and there’s so much they don’t know yet. I get to see them really grow and become good clinicians. Their knowledge expands so much from that first day when they arrive to when they’re done with the program that they’re ready for clinical rotations just from the experience they get over the summer. It’s just fun to watch them gain confidence.”

In a typical day during her time in the STORM program, Ericson would arrive for clinic at 9 a.m. If the patient agreed to be seen by a student, she went into the exam room first to get the patient’s history and perform a physical exam. Afterwards Ericson would relay the information she had gathered to Dr. Brown to determine a diagnosis. Then they would return to the patient together and discuss a plan of action. Brown also practices obstetrics, so there were birth deliveries and follow-up appointments. Because of staffing shortages during Ericson’s time in Abilene, deliveries were diverted to the hospital in Salina, 25 miles away.

Many of Brown’s patients are on board with being part of medical students’ education. Ericson assisted in the delivery and later the one-week checkup of a baby girl during her time in Abilene. The baby’s parents were impressed with her.

“Faith was so personable, and she cared about our personal lives. We had such a great experience with her,” the mother said.

Through interacting with patients, Ericson has found that she also loves the relational side of family medicine. The most impactful experiences of her time in the STORM program came from realizing the intimacy that can be part of practicing medicine. She cited an example of listening to a patient who was dealing with a spouse with Alzheimer’s disease and the emotional toll dealing with the associated care and decisions were having on the patient.

“I loved that she felt comfortable sharing what was on her heart with me, and that I had the opportunity to comfort her and be with her through that,” Ericson said. “Alzheimer’s runs in my family, and I have some family members who are starting to experience that, so I really felt that one.”

Ericson also experienced the ups and downs of family medicine.

“I get to deliver babies, but I also didn’t realize how many miscarriages women experience,” she said. "That has been weighty. It’s really hard, but I also I feel so privileged to be let into those moments and to be able to help in that.”

For Ericson, getting this hands-on clinical experience was valuable affirmation of the path she’s chosen.

“A lot of us in my class want to do family medicine in a rural area,” Ericson said. “But there’s a difference between wanting to do it versus actually doing it and getting into the routine and feeling what it’s like. It’s great to find out I’m on the right path early on.”