For Hilary Hamric, D.O., being one of the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine’s (WVSOM) eight regional assistant deans means helping medical students develop the confidence and knowledge they need to become compassionate, skilled physicians.
Hamric leads the South East Region of WVSOM’s Statewide Campus, which consists of seven regions across the state where third- and fourth-year students complete their clinical rotations. She said she enjoys seeing students transition from medical school’s first two years, spent largely in classrooms and labs, to the clinical years, when they work with physicians in hospitals, clinics and private medical offices.
“When they first come in, many of them area little unsure of themselves. They might not know which specialty they want to go into, or they think they know, but it changes. It’s fun to see that progression,” Hamric said. “I love watching them advance from the early stages of clinical medicine to being ready to take the next step into a residency program.”
The South East Region of the Statewide Campus encompasses West Virginia’s Greenbrier, McDowell, Mercer, Monroe, Nicholas, Pocahontas, Raleigh, Summers and Webster counties as well as portions of Fayette and Wyoming counties. Hamric spent her own childhood in the region, having been raised in Summersville, WV, where she was a neighborhood babysitter – a role that helped nurture her desire to care for pediatric patients. She first did so as a registered nurse, spending about eight years working with critically ill children in West Virginia University’s hospital system.
“I worked in pediatric intensive care as a charge nurse, a transport nurse and a pediatric trauma coordinator. I learned that taking care of critically ill kids puts everything else into perspective. It taught me to view daily problems and worries in a way I may not have been able to without those years,” she said.
Hamric didn’t consider becoming a physician until her third year of nursing school, when she was accepted into an externship program and began observing young physicians.
“That’s when I first started seeing residents and watching how they rounded and presented. It was my first flash of ‘That looks interesting. I think I could do that.’ Ultimately I decided to take the path of medicine because I wanted that more comprehensive knowledge base, that detailed foundation,” she said.
After completing the additional course work required to make the leap from nursing to medicine, Hamric selected WVSOM as her medical school.
“Nursing focuses a lot on empathy and compassion, and that’s something WVSOM also does well as an osteopathic medical school,” she said. “I liked the idea of a holistic approach to medicine. I didn’t have a complete understanding of what osteopathic manipulative medicine was, but I thought it would be interesting to have that extra tool as you take care of people. And my husband and I liked the Lewisburg community, so it was a good fit.”
Hamric graduated in WVSOM’s Class of 2014 and completed a pediatrics residency at WVU, where she received two consecutive awards for senior resident of the year, first in the neonatal intensive care unit and then in the pediatric intensive care unit. She returned to WVSOM to join the school’s clinical faculty in 2017, splitting her time between educating students and working in outpatient pediatrics at Lewisburg’s Robert C. Byrd Clinic. Hamric said the rewards of teaching are plentiful.
“First, there’s the joy of watching students absorb the information and grow. Also, it forces you to keep up to date: Students ask a lot of questions, so you have to stay abreast of new information. If you’re presenting on a topic, you need to be well prepared because they’re going to ask about intricacies you probably haven’t thought about in a while,” she said.
In 2020, Hamric accepted her current position of regional assistant dean, a role that encompasses working not only with students but with preceptors – physicians who provide supervision during the clinical years of medical school. In addition to offering academic counseling and ensuring students are on track to graduate and secure residency programs, WVSOM’s regional assistant deans help recruit preceptors and communicate with them about students’ progress.
Hamric, who received the school’s Statewide Campus Pride Award in 2020 and again in 2023 for her work as a regional assistant dean, said her own experience as a WVSOM student taught her learning techniques that she tries to pass on to today’s aspiring physicians.
“I was a nontraditional student with a husband and a 2-year-old. It forced me to learn how to look at information in small, digestible bites, to set daily attainable goals that help you meet your larger goal in a comfortable way where you’re not cramming at the end. That’s something I still carry with me and encourage students to do,” she said.
For all the progress she is grateful to help students achieve, preparing them for working in the medical profession has meant learning some new skills of her own, Hamric said.
“The goal is to make sure our students are educated and well-rounded,” she said. “That can mean telling them when they’ve done great, which comes naturally to me. On the flip side, there are conversations when they’re not up to snuff on their exams or you’ve gotten negative feedback from a preceptor. Those conversations are more challenging. But I’ve learned how to navigate them, and ultimately I think my students know it’s out of love. If you don’t correct somebody when they need to improve, you’re not helping them.”
