Idaho WWAMI Academics

Your career in medicine starts here

Lead, serve and transform health care in your community with Idaho WWAMI.

You'll begin in the Foundations Phase in Moscow, Idaho where your curriculum will blend biomedical sciences and in-person clinical skills and offer you unique electives like wilderness medicine.

From there you’ll move into the Clinical Phase, completing clerkships in rural and urban communities across Idaho and the WWAMI region. You’ll step into the community to work with physicians, faculty and other health professionals in patient care settings, and participate in labs, simulations and learning workshops, gaining important experiences in your field.

Foundations Phase (years 1 and 2)

The Idaho WWAMI Foundations Phase is an 18-month immersive experience that prepares you for patient care and clinical excellence. You’ll start practicing clinical skills on day one and expand your knowledge of the medical sciences.

In the Foundations Phase, core competency areas (called “threads”) such as pharmacology, histology and global health are woven into the coursework to reinforce essential skills. You could broaden your perspective with electives like Wilderness Medicine, Spanish for Health Professionals or Alternative Approaches to Healing, which explore diverse challenges and viewpoints in health care.

Clinical Phase (years 3 and 4)

In your second phase as an Idaho WWAMI student, you’ll spend time in clinical settings across the Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho region, learning from experienced physicians in rural and urban environments. The clinical phase is broken into two sub-phases: the Patient Care Phase and the Explore and Focus Phase.

Patient Care Phase: Over 12 months, you’ll master family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry and surgery. You'll also have six weeks to explore a clinical elective or take some time off.

Explore and Focus Phase: The final 15 months of this program allow you to explore potential specialty careers through a combination of required and elective clinical clerkships. Participate in required advanced patient care clerkships, neurology/neurosurgery and emergency medicine and clinical elective opportunities such as child psychiatry and rehabilitation. You’ll prepare for the final step of your medical career with the required Transition to Residency experience.

Rural training opportunities

Through rural training programs like the Targeted Rural Underserved Track (TRUST), the Rural Underserved Opportunities Program (RUOP) and the WWAMI Rural Integrated Training Experience (WRITE), you’ll gain hands-on experience working with rural physicians, learning the unique rewards and challenges of rural medicine.

Targeted Rural Underserved Track (TRUST)

TRUST provides an exceptional educational experience that will prepare you for future practice in underserved or rural communities.

As a TRUST scholar, you’ll be matched with continuity communities in Idaho that you’ll return to periodically throughout medical school and benefit from the expertise of physician preceptors over the course of your medical school career.

This immersive program equips you to become a physician uniquely prepared for the challenges of rural health care. TRUST connects you to unique programs like RUOP and WWAMI Rural Integrated Training Experience (WRITE), exposing you to the realities of underserved care. Through these experiences, you'll be at the front of a movement to strengthen the rural health care workforce.

The deadline for admission is December 1 each year. Qualified University of Washington School of Medicine WWAMI applicants can apply to the Idaho TRUST program within their secondary UWSOM application materials.

Learn what it means to be a rural doc, and about the TRUST program.

Rural Underserved Opportunities Program (RUOP)

Spend four weeks learning about the unique challenges and rewards of practicing in a rural or underserved setting firsthand. RUOP students leave the program equipped with insights into rural health care, inspired to pursue a future in rural or underserved medicine.

RUOP is your chance to dive into hands-on primary care, working closely with a physician in a rural or underserved community during the summer between your first and second years of medical school.

If you’re interested in the RUOP program, you should apply in early December of your first year of the Idaho WWAMI program.

Immerse yourself in rural medicine, and apply to RUOP.

WWAMI Rural Integrated Training Experience

WRITE provides select third-year Idaho WWAMI students a 21 to 24-week longitudinal integrated clerkship in one of 30 rural communities located throughout the WWAMI region. Throughout the WRITE clerkship, students experience a broad range of medical, pediatric, obstetric-gynecologic and psychiatric problems with an emphasis on the rural physician’s roles and responsibilities to diagnose, treat and manage these health problems.

While TRUST Scholars are required to participate in WRITE and fill the majority of WRITE sites, a limited number of sites may be available for non-TRUST students.

Non-TRUST students who are interested in participating in WRITE are required to submit a completed application based on the timeline provided.

Lay down roots in a rural community, and apply to the WRITE program.