Medical student Madison Bulger received a late Christmas present Thursday morning. The Poplar Bluffian is the first recipient of the Quad County Medical Society scholarship.
The society includes physicians from Butler, Wayne, Ripley and Carter counties and is an affiliate of the Missouri State Medical Association.
While the scholarship Dr. Dorothy Munch and Dr. Matt Riffle presented Bulger has no strings attached, the doctors want to encourage medical students from rural communities in the hopes of them returning to their home towns or other rural areas.
Munch is the incoming QCMS president and Riffle is the outgoing president.
Munch credits Dr. Kirby Turner with engineering the work on the scholarship, as well as helping keep the association active.
The money is from the state organization, as well as the Quad County group, Munch said.
Calling Bulger “a delightful young woman,” Munch added, “thankfully a lot of Poplar Bluff students are in the pipeline” going to medical school. “We are trying to cultivate and making encouragements to get them back to the area.”
Munch grew up in the small community of Edgar Springs, Missouri, which made living and practicing in Southeast Missouri comfortable for her. Students from a rural areas return with their eyes wide open and know the advantages and disadvantages, she said.
A longtime dream
Bulger has been thinking about medicine as a career since she was in third grade. Her grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer and doctors recommended she be transferred out of town for treatment.
At a young age, Bulger realized her family was fortunate. Not everyone in her rural community could afford to be away from work and travel to be with a sick relative.
Her parents are Tim Bulger and Helen Bulger.
Uncertain about her career path, Bulger wanted to make a difference. She studied, kept her grades high and graduated second in her class at Poplar Bluff High School. She graduated from the University of Missouri - Kansas City this year. She earned a bachelor of science degree in biology and medical sciences, which is a pre-med program, with a grade point average of 3.88 (summa cum laude).
One year at UMKC, she received a SEARCH (students engaged in the arts and research) grant for her research on bacterial ribosome point mutations.
During summers, she worked as a unit secretary at Poplar Buff Regional Medical Center, a patient sitter for Preferred Hospice of Dexter and an environmental aid at Westwood Hills Health Care. She has shadowed Dr. Dean Dye and Dr. Martha Margreiter of Poplar Bluff Pediatrics. In Kansas City, she volunteered at Children’s Mercy Hospital.
During high school, she shadowed Margreiter, Dr. Brad Stuckenschneider, Dye and Dr. Stanley Ziomek.
An interest in
rural medicine
She’s a first year medical student at the University of Missouri - Columbia now, where she is one of nine students named to the Bryant Scholars Program.
That program is designed to train more physicians to work in rural areas. Out of the 115 counties in Missouri, 101 are rural and 98 of those are designated “health professional shortage areas,” according to a report by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. A health professional shortage means there are more than 3,500 patients per physician in a given area, according to the U.S. Health Resources and Services.
Bulger calls the program “awesome and is patient-based learning.” She knows her next few years will be filled with studying and trying to get sleep.
While her area of basic study is family and/or internal medicine, after her residency she hopes to earn a fellowship and specialize.
Bulger was aware while she was growing up, specialized care in Southeast Missouri had advanced, but she knows there are still needs not being met.
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