Hospitals in Manchester and Vernon that form the Eastern Connecticut Health Network (ECHN) will become the state’s first teaching hospitals for students east of the Connecticut River with a new partnership it has signed with an osteopathic college in Maine.
Under the partnership announced Friday, ECHN is bringing 16 third-year medical students from the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine (UNECOM) in Biddeford, Maine, to Rockville General and Manchester Memorial hospitals this summer for a year of clinical and academic training.
Students will rotate through all of the medical disciplines at both hospitals and ECHN physicians’ offices. They will also be taught by ECHN medical staff members with faculty appointments at UNECOM.
The curricula and clinical work will include internal and family medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, behavioral health, surgery, community health, and psychiatry.
Fourth-year UNECOM students will also be able to choose electives like emergency medicine, radiology, pathology, and some medical and surgery specialties.
