Add surgery to the list of residency programs that will soon be in place at Samaritan Health Services.

The mid-valley hospital operator has received approval from the American Osteopathic Association to accept up to 10 residents into an orthopedic surgery training program set to begin in August 2010.

Previously approved osteopathic residency programs in family practice, internal medicine and psychiatry are scheduled to start this July. The four training programs, which range from three to five years in length, will eventually have a total of 36 positions.

Residents in all the programs will work under the supervision of attending physicians, said Dr. Alissa Craft, director of medical education for Samaritan.

"Residents, while they have completed medical school and may be licensed to practice medicine, are not yet certified," Craft said. "Their amount of clinical experience is still too limited. They spend those months doing a lot of clinical work."

The residency programs will be housed primarily at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Corvallis, Craft said, but the physicians-in-training will also have opportunities to work in other hospitals and clinics both within and outside the Samaritan network.

Samaritan is pursuing residencies in several other specialties, Craft said, but can't provide any details until they're approved.

While operated separately, the residency programs are part of the buildup to the projected 2011 opening of an osteopathic medical school in Lebanon. The college, to be operated by Samaritan and the California-based Western University of Health Sciences, is on track to be Oregon's first new medical school in more than a century.

Western already sends some third- and fourth-year medical students to the area to complete one-year clerkships with physicians in Samaritan's network of five mid-valley hospitals. The residency programs, however, are open to graduates of medical schools throughout the country.

"There's a national application system that's computer-based," Craft said.

Samaritan officials are hoping that both the med school and the residency programs will help the mid-valley fight a looming national physician shortage as aging doctors begin to retire.

"There is a strong link between where physicians do their training and where they end up practicing medicine, so we believe these steps will greatly strengthen our ability to recruit and retain outstanding physicians to the area," said Larry Mullins, Samaritan's president and chief executive. "Most of the medical students here now are from the Pacific Northwest, and they encouraged us to establish residency programs so they can stay in this area after medical school."

Bennett Hall can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.