COMP Alumna Dr. Janice Blumer to help lead COMP-NW
Returning to her academic roots and wishing to help the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific-Northwest (COMP-Northwest) campus prosper are reasons why Dr. Janice Blumer, a COMP alumna, recently was recertified through the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM), the governing body for allopathic family medicine.
“”This is important, because COMP-Northwest is beginning to establish itself in Lebanon (Ore.) with Samaritan Health Systems,”” said Blumer, a 1991 COMP graduate. “”This allows a platform for communication for the Northwest campus, because Samaritan is primarily allopathic.””
Blumer said recertification would allow Samaritan, and allopathic physicians in general, to understand that osteopaths embody the knowledge of primary care medicine, and would encourage a dialogue for dual certification processes in osteopathic and allopathic residency training programs.
Blumer was hired as a full-time professor for WesternU’s COMP-Northwest campus in July 2010, and will lead the service learning curriculum and teach osteopathic manipulative medicine (OMM) and philosophy to the first-year class of about 100 students.
The COMP-Northwest campus will hold its inaugural Commencement and white coat ceremonies on July 30, 2011. Classes will begin August 1.
Blumer, who is working at WesternU’s Pomona, Calif., campus during the 2010-11 academic year, is more than ready for the COMP-Northwest campus to open, as she only occasionally gets to see her husband and three children, who have remained in Oregon while she is in California.
Blumer is being mentored by faculty and is teaching courses at WesternU’s Pomona campus while also assisting the admissions committee in selecting the students for COMP-Northwest, said Michael A. Seffinger, DO, FAAFP, COMP Associate Professor, Family Medicine/Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine and Chair of the Department of Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine/Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine.
“”Passing the American Board of Family Physicians is an important milestone, and Dr. Blumer’s success is another example of the great leadership in place at our COMP-Northwest location,”” said Clinton Adams, DO, FAAFP, COMP Dean, and Vice President for Clinical Affairs. “”Dr. Blumer took a year away from her family to come to Pomona in order to become familiar with the curriculum and educating medical students. It’s people like her, throughout all of WesternU, that make us the gold standard in health professions education.””
Blumer completed what is now called the Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine/Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine Pre Doctoral Teaching Fellowship Program and taught at COMP for three years prior to her graduation. She also completed her residency through University Hospitals of Cleveland/ Case Western Reserve University (CWRU).
Her husband, Dr. Tim Blumer, a child psychiatrist, is a 1989 COMP graduate. They met on campus when he was director of COMP’s student theater production of Noel Coward’s “”Blithe Spirit,”” and she had small part in the play. The student theater group SANUS (Latin for soundness of mind, emotions and behavior) was founded in 1985 and produces a play each semester.
Blumer and her family recently relocated to Corvallis. Until then they lived in the central Oregon community of Redmond, where she has practiced family medicine and OMM for the past 14 years. She said she loves a small-town, rural environment like the one in Lebanon, a grass-seed farming and timber mill community of about 20,000 located about 80 miles south of Portland.
Blumer grew up in a medical family — her mother is a retired nurse, and her father, now deceases, was a doctor. She says she grew into medicine, enjoys the complex problems it presents, and loves patient interaction.
In the spring, Blumer will be taking the American Osteopathic Board of Family Physicians (AOBFP) exam for osteopathic family medicine in order to hold a dual certification in both osteopathic and allopathic family medicine.
“”It’s very exciting to be able to help lay the foundation for osteopathic medicine in the Willamette Valley and be a part of the second medical school in all of Oregon,”” Blumer said.
COMP-Northwest will be the first new medical school in Oregon in more than a century. The new COMP-Northwest facility is a 54,000-square-foot building due to be completed in spring 2011 on the 50-acre Samaritan Health Sciences Campus adjacent to Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital in Lebanon, Ore.
