Dr. Bomengen honored for teaching

Doctor Travis Bomengen was awarded the 2021 WRITE Excellence in Teaching Award for the Wyoming region.

In a letter from the University of Washington School of Medicine, Office of Rural Programs it said, "This award aims to recognize and honor preceptors with a track record of excellence in teaching medical students as well as those that serve as a leader in their community." Nominations were collected from WRITE students across the WWAMI program. WWAMI is through the University of Washington which partners with states that do not have a medical school. They include Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho. 

Dr. Bomengen was nominated by a previous student, Marcus Coulridge, who said during his WRITE experience Dr. Bomengen, "kept a high standard stating he planned to treat me as an intern, constantly requesting and providing feedback." This interaction took place during Coulridge's interest in OB. Coulridge continued to say about his training, "This site provided my ideal experience for my future goals as a full spectrum family medicine doctor and Dr. Bomengen was an integral part of that education."

Dr. Bomengen said, "The WRITE program is pushing or encouraging students to go into family medicine. In doing so, they have these students doing longitudinal rotations at some of the rural sites. These are all Wyoming students who will hopefully come back to Wyoming. Our goal in doing this is to try to encourage the students to consider rural primary care and practice." 

In medical school a student will do rotations in various focuses in blocks of about four weeks. Here in this program they are taking various focuses and doing them every day at the same time. Dr. Bomengen said, "It's a more true to life experience rather than being immersed in one subject for a time period." Longitudinal is done all at once for a longer period of time.

Peter McCullough presented the award to Dr. Bomengen. McCullough is a third-year medical student who is originally from Washington state and went to the Wyoming Catholic College in Lander. He is currently in the WRITE program working with Dr. Bomengen. McCullough said, "I really feel the staff here is invested in my success and because I feel they are highly invested in me, I want to invest back." 

Regarding McCullough's interaction with Dr. Bomengen in his training he said it started small and built up into greater tasks and responsibilities. This process takes over several years where the student ends up not having their hands held and seeing patients by themselves. 

In response to receiving the award, Dr. Bomengen said, "The primary thing is all of us were mentored in our time in medical school. It's an opportunity for us to give back. And the thing I feel so fortunate about in Thermopolis is that we have four very skilled providers that practice medicine in a little different way each and so it's not just me doing this. This award has my name on it, but I accept this almost more for the group of us, because the group of us were responsible for teaching the students. Peter is not just with me every day. He works with Dr. Weyer, Dr. Bischoff and Dr. Mathey. So it's the group of us doing that."