TRACKING KIDNEY DISEASE: UBMD, UB’s 450-member physician practice plan, has received a $7 million state grant to implement a novel electronic records system to track and manage treatment of chronic kidney disease. Please click on the link for more information.
RADIO ROUNDS RETURNS AUGUST 9 FOR SECOND SEASON
Radio Rounds is the first-ever medical radio talk show produced entirely by medical students, and having completed a successful first season in the spring of 2009, the ‘Rounds’ crew is headed back to the airwaves this fall!
The second season of Radio Rounds premieres on Sunday August 9 at 12pm ET, and the live show can be accessed at the show’s website (link above).
Radio Rounds is produced by medical students at the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine in Dayton, Ohio. In addition to airing live every Sunday from 12pm to 1pm ET, all shows are also available for free on iTunes. Podcasts of the initial eight episodes of Radio Rounds this past spring were downloaded over 5,000 times, as featured guests included nationally-renowned physicians such as Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen (creator of “The Healer’s Art”), Dr. Amy Reed (vascular surgeon, Cincinnati), and Dr. Alvin Jackson (Director of the Ohio Department of Health).
The special guest for the August 9 premiere will be Dr. Brian Cole, Head Team Physician of the Chicago Bulls and Professor of Orthopedics at Rush University Medical Center. Dr. Cole was recently named the 2009 NBA Team Physician of the Year. Additional guests who will join us on various Sunday afternoons this fall include:
Elissa Ely: Psychiatrist, NY Times Columnist, Former NPR Contributor
Thomas Gill: Medical Director for the Boston Red Sox, Team Physician for the New England Patriots and Professor of Orthopedics at Harvard Medical School
Tracy Kidder: Pulitzer Prize winning American author of Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World and his latest book Strength In What Remains
Martin Makary: Chair of Gastrointestinal Surgery and Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Surgical Outcomes Research. Dr. Makary serves in leadership roles for the United Nations World Health Organization and is a regular medical guest on CNN.
Stephen Bergman: Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and author of The House of God
Gloria Wilder: Physician, President and CEO of Core Health
Sandeep Jauhaur: Director of the Heart Failure Program at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. He writes regularly for The New York Times and The New England Journal of Medicine and is the author of Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation.
Evan Lyon: Internist, Editor of the Journal of Health and Human Rights, Physician for ‘Partners in Health’ organization.
Robert Marion: Professor of Pediatrics and Obstetrics and Gyneclogy at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York, Author of six published books, including The Intern Blues and Learning to Play God: The Coming of Age of a Young Doctor.
Michael Collins: Practicing orthopedic surgeon in Illinois, Author of Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs and Hot Lights, Cold Steel
Legislators in Washington, D.C. working on health care reform
Again, Radio Rounds returns August 9, and we hope that you will be able to listen on Sundays this fall! Contact us at radiorounds@gmail.com for suggestions and feedback!
Warmly,
Radio Rounds
iTunes: Free podcasts of past episodes here or search Radio Rounds
Facebook: search Radio Rounds
Twitter: RadioRounds
DOWNTOWN CONSTRUCTION: UB and Kaleida Health are breaking ground today at Goodrich and Ellicott streets for a new building to house Kaleida Health’s Global Vascular Institute and UB’s new Center for Clinical and Translational Research and a new UB Biosciences Incubator.
SPERM ANALYSIS: Couples struggling with fertility problems have a new option for assessing their ability to have a child with the startup of a new Buffalo-based company called LifeCell Dx Inc. that is a spin-off of UB research.
The University of Queensland School of Medicine has partnered with the Ochsner Health System in New Orleans to create a program in which students spend 2 years in Australia at UQ and 2 years in New Orleans at Ochsner. Eighty (80) students are being accepted for January 2010 entry. Please go to the website or call 877-777-0155 for more information.
Please see this attached article published last week in The New York Times titled: The Dog-Eat-Dog World of Applying to Medical School.
Please pay particular note to the line that reads -“I needed to think about how I would become a good doctor (not a good applicant).”
UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Science Anatomical Gift Program. Read more at the link.
June 3, 2009 - The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine (VTCSOM) received word today that they have been granted preliminary accreditation from the LCME Board. VTCSOM is a private medical school formed through a public-private partnership between Virginia Tech and Carilion Clinic, a major health care provider in southwestern Virginia. The new medical school and research institute campus is being built adjacent to the new Carilion Clinic near downtown Roanoke, Virginia. The class size will be 42 students per year. The charter class will begin in August 2010.
- VTCSOM offers a four-year M.D. degree.
- VTCSOM will be admitting both Virginia state residents and out-of-state residents as students to our medical school. However, only U.S. Citizens, Canadian Citizens, and Permanent Residents will be considered.
The following information summarizes the application process at VTCSOM.
- AMCAS Online Application (VTCSOM is listed in Tab 7 under Virginia schools in AMCAS - AMCAS application due date is 1 December)
- Secondary Online Application (by Invitation)
- Personal References - VTCSOM uses the Personal Potential Index (PPI) evaluation process developed by Educational Testing Service (ETS) for personal recommendations, rather than traditional letters of recommendation.
- Interview Invitation - Interviews will take place on the VTCSOM campus, in Roanoke, Virginia, on several weekends throughout the fall and winter months. VTCSOM utilizes a Multiple-Mini Interview (MMI) process using predetermined scenarios. The MMI interview technique was developed and implemented by McMaster University in Ontario for their M.D. program.
- Rolling Admissions Process - VTCSOM will use a rolling admission process and expects to send out its first group of acceptances approximately a month after its first interview weekend. Additional acceptances will be sent out approximately a month after each interview weekend.
Interested advisors and applicants can find out more information about the school, curriculum, and admissions process at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine on the website.
Stephen Workman, Ph.D.
Director of Admissions
Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine
1 Riverside Circle, Suite 102
Roanoke, VA 24016
HEART REPAIR: UB researchers have demonstrated for the first time that injecting adult bone marrow stem cells into skeletal muscle can repair cardiac tissue, reversing heart failure. Please click on the link for more information.
AMCAS 2009 Letter Pilot (Approx 118 Schools)
If you are applying to any of the schools listed here, please do the following:
- Complete the “AMCAS Letters of Evaluation/Recommendation Section” of the AMCAS Application
- Indicate in your AMCAS application that your letters will be in the form of a “Committee Letter” IF you have or plan to go through the UB Prehealth Committee
- Enter “Elizabeth Morsheimer” as the “Primary Author/Contact”
- As the Committee packet contains multiple other letters (4-7), it is NOT necessary for you to list those letter writers in the “Additional Authors” section of the AMCAS letters tab.
- You will be provided with a printable form containing an AMCAS letter ID. Our office in 109 Norton Hall NEEDS this form which includes your AMCAS Letter ID. You can send this to Jinny Majewski at vmajewsk@buffalo.edu or drop/mail the form off to 109 Norton Hall.
This is summarized as well under item #8 at the link.
D.O.s Could Play Key Role in Bolstering Primary Care Workforce, Say Academy Leaders
By Barbara Bein
5/19/2009
Like many students graduating from the nation’s colleges of osteopathic medicine, Richard Gray has chosen family medicine as his specialty. In fact, Gray, an AAFP student member from Fort Worth, Texas, and other soon-to-be doctors of osteopathic medicine, are an important part of the primary care workforce, says an Academy physician workforce expert.
“Traditionally, the osteopathic medical schools have attracted a larger proportion of young people interested in family medicine,” Perry Pugno, M.D., M.P.H., director of the AAFP Division of Medical Education, told AAFP News Now.
OSTEOPATHIC SCHOOL ENROLLMENT SEES STEADY RISE
For the past several years, enrollment at the 25 member colleges of the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, (2-page PDF; About PDFs) or AACOM, has been growing steadily.
Last fall, first-time enrollment among osteopathic medical students reached 4,768, an increase of 360 students, or about 8 percent, compared with the enrolling class of fall 2007, according to Tom Levitan, AACOM’s vice president for research and applicant services.
Most of the increase stemmed from the opening of two new osteopathic medical colleges in Yakima, Wash., and Parker, Colo. AACOM is expecting even more students to enroll this fall, with the opening of three new satellite campuses in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
The first-year enrollment growth in the osteopathic medical colleges parallels that in U.S. allopathic medical schools, which enrolled a historic high of 18,036 students last fall, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (6-page PDF; About PDFs)
PRIMARY CARE REMAINS CHOICE OF MANY OSTEOPATHIC GRADS
D.O.s have a long history of choosing primary care specialties, including family medicine, general internal medicine and general pediatrics, Levitan said. Even so, he noted, the results of annual AACOM surveys of graduating osteopathic medical students have shown a decline in self-reported interest in primary care from 40 percent of osteopathic graduates in 1999 to slightly less than 28 percent in 2007.
Interestingly, Levitan said, more osteopathic medical students opt for primary care specialties at the time they graduate than the number who said they planned to go into primary care when they entered school. For example, nearly 22 percent of students entering the nation’s colleges of osteopathic medicine in 2004 said they were interested in primary care. When those students graduated in 2008, slightly more than 29 percent chose primary care specialties.
According to the National Resident Matching Program, 45.1 percent of overall Match participants in 2008 chose residencies in family medicine, internal medicine (categorical) or pediatrics (categorical). By comparison, 55.3 percent of osteopathic medical students who participated in the 2008 Match chose one of those primary care specialties.
Levitan said he believes that osteopathic medical schools may provide a model for ways to produce more students interested in primary care careers.
Pugno agreed. For one thing, faculty at the osteopathic medical colleges who serve on admissions committees seem to seek students with characteristics that make them more likely to choose family medicine and primary care, such as coming from a rural background, he said. He noted that admissions policies are one component of the Academy’s overall strategy for attracting students interested in family medicine.
EXPOSURE TO PRIMARY CARE CAN GUIDE SPECIALTY CHOICE
Gray became a newly minted D.O. when he graduated May 16 from the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine, or TCOM. In a few weeks, he will start his training in the St. Louis University/Scott Air Force Base family medicine residency in Belleville, Ill.
Gray said he learned about osteopathic principles as a physical therapy student at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. He worked full time as a physical therapist for eight years before entering TCOM in 2005.
During his first two years at TCOM, Gray said he was exposed to primary care repeatedly in the classroom, the clinic and the hospital. He did a preceptorship with a family physician in Fort Worth who still delivers babies. He also did a rural rotation with a group of four family physicians — three M.D.s and one D.O. — in the town of Littlefield in West Texas where he observed them practicing the full spectrum of family medicine.
“Excellent experiences with good family medicine preceptors throughout my four years at TCOM sparked my interest in the specialty. I believe that a family medicine residency will help me become the kind of physician I have always wanted to be,” Gray said. About 45 percent of the 128 students in his graduating class plan to go into primary care, he added.
Jason Dees, D.O., of New Albany, Miss., the new physician member of the AAFP Board of Directors, graduated from the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine, or WVSOM, in Lewisburg and did his family medicine residency at The Medical Center in Columbus, Ga.
Dees said he considered becoming a surgeon, but chose family medicine as his career after his third year of medical school.
“WVSOM required every third-year student to do community-based family medicine as our first rotation,” he said. “As I saw the relationships that developed between doctor and patient, I was hooked. The focus on whole-person care was also very appealing to me.”
Pugno said both allopathic and osteopathic physicians are needed to meet the demand for more primary care health professionals in the coming years. ”We are partners with the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians and other osteopathic physicians’ groups in our endeavors to make a difference in American health care,” he said.
