Several students studying osteopathic medicine in Suwanee may have come from around the country, but their school is not the only thing they have in common. At least eight of them are Eagle Scouts.

The students, all enrolled at the Georgia campus of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, recently gathered to attend the Northeast Georgia Council of the Boy Scouts of Americas American Values Dinner along with Chief Campus Officer Bryan Ginn. The dinner featured a local scouting report and address by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle.

Several of the students said scouting gave them a glimpse into the hard work, life-saving practices and being prepared for emergencies for the profession theyre preparing to enter. Not to mention how to prioritize tasks.

Medical school is certainly the most demanding task Ive ever agreed to, but scouting and my Eagle Scout project in particular taught me that some of the best rewards and achievements come through working hard and persevering through difficult tasks, said second-year student Coston Rowe of Gadsden, Ala. The schoolwork is hard and seemingly endless sometimes, but I know that because of scouting, I will be equipped to help my future patients on a daily basis and provide for my family in an exciting and fulfilling way.

Rowe said his Eagle Scout project was to renovate a local neighborhood tennis and basketball court, including repairing or replacing the surface.

Along with other requirements, in order to advance from Life Scout to Eagle Scout, you must initiate, plan, manage and carry out a service project directed to benefit the local community it is up to you to plan, recruit help for, and execute this project, Rowe said. There were many times within that year that I just wanted to call it quits and not worry about the logistics anymore. But with the encouragement and help of my dad, my scout masters, and my other family and friends, I persevered and finished the project one year and one week after the first day of labor.

First-year student Brant Barron of Thomaston said he learned how to stick to something in scouting, and hes applied it in medical school.

Scouting introduced me to the practice of applying constant effort to reach increasingly more difficult goals. Many challenges presented in Boy Scouts let me experience situations where my personal strengths, mental preparedness and adaptability that I normally depended on would be exhausted, Barron said. I learned that only the faith to persevere could guide me to the tasks completion.

Read more from the original source:

Ga.-PCOM students credit Eagle Scouting with medical school ... - Gwinnettdailypost.com

Yale School of Medicine Dean Dr. Robert Alpern sent the following message to the schools community members on March 7:

As you may be aware, on Tuesday, Feb. 28, four members of the Yale School of Medicine community became ill after drinking from a single-service, pod style coffee machine located at an office area at 333 Cedar St. and were monitored at Yale New Haven Hospital. All have returned to work. Yale Police, the New Haven Fire Department, the State Department of Energy & Environmental Protection, and the Yale Environmental Health and Safety team responded and initiated an investigation.

I am writing to update you on their progress and our continued efforts. Today we learned that an independent laboratory test on items removed from the area indicated the presence of sodium azide, a substance commonly found in laboratories and used as a preservative. The single-serve coffee machine was not connected to a water source and the area was evaluated and declared to be safe by Yale Environmental Health and Safety. The Yale Police Department is continuing its investigation, in collaboration with local, state, and federal law enforcement.

At the same time, we are reviewing security and safety procedures with our public safety team. Out of an abundance of caution, you should be aware that the symptoms of exposure to sodium azide are dizziness, headache, nausea and vomiting, rapid breathing, and rapid heart rate.

In the event you experience these symptoms, please contact Yale Health Acute Care at (203) 432-0123.

Anyone with any information regarding this incident, should contact the Yale Police Department at (203) 432-4400. We will keep you updated but caution that gathering complete information will take some time. As always, the safety and security of the Yale community is our utmost priority.

Visit link:

Investigation continues into illness linked to coffee machine at medical school - Yale News

As Congress begins formulating a new budget, some professors and researchers at Harvard Medical School are concerned about potential cuts in federal funding.

While Harvard as a whole received almost $600 million from the federal government in 2016, 69.9 percent of that came from the National Institutes of Health, and Medical School professors say that federal research funding is particularly important for their work. Federal funding for research at Harvard has steadily declined since 2009, leading University President Drew G. Faust to cite the NIH as a major focus of concern during a visit to Washington D.C. in February.

NIHs funds in research grants allow investigators to pursue interesting and novel ideas with a lot of academic freedom and intellectual freedom, said Medical School and pediatrics professor Kenneth D. Mandl. Its a very well-designed system to promote high quality medical research.

Mandl said while he doesnt expect any tectonic shifts in research funding, he thinks there are certain research agencies such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute whose very existence may be in question with the new budget.

If we see those agencies diminished, we would see less research thats evaluative of the healthcare system itself, Mandl said.

Aaron S. Kesselheim 96, a Medical School professor who studies drug approval and drug development laws, said that the potential decreases in funding, combined with inflation, is worrying.

Unfortunately, it may drive some smart people out of the field and out of academia because there just isnt as much funding available to go around, Kesselheim said.

Kesselheim said that most transformative drugs that have been approved by the United States in the last 25 years have had direct origins in publicly funded research.

The kind of therapeutic innovation that is most likely to move the needle clinically comes from these publicly funded origins, Kesselheim said.

Mandl also noted that in the past two years, requirements for receiving NIH funding have also increased, resulting in a more competitive process for grant-seekers and a push for diversification of funding sources. He said he expects that trend to continue in the future.

John N. Campbell, a researcher at the Medical School, said that potential budget cuts made him nervous. Last year, Campbell catalogued 50 distinct brain cell types associated with appetite using a relatively expensive technique called gene expression profiling.

Funding is a worthwhile investment because we learn things we cant find out in any other way, Campbell said. The progress being made now in terms of understanding how the brain works will lead to breakthrough after breakthrough for medicine.

I think we are all a bit nervous about [potential budget cuts], but were staying optimistic and investment in science is always a priority, Campbell said.

Campbell said that in the event of budget cuts, researchers would most likely seek alternative sources of funding through non-profit organizations. Otherwise, Campbell said, the scope of research projects could be reduced.

Beyond the Medical School, professors across Harvard are worried about cuts in research funding despite a record fiscal year. In February, humanities professors expressed concern about the potential cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Environmental studies professors also expect to be affected by potential budget cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Staff writer Alexis J. Ross can be reached at alexis.ross@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @aross125.

Staff writer William L. Wang can be reached at william.wang@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @wlwang20.

Despite Record Year, Research Funding Remains 'Huge Challenge'

Despite Record Year, Research Funding Remains 'Huge Challenge'

Read more from the original source:

Med School Professors Worried About Federal Budget | News | The ... - Harvard Crimson

Washingtons two major universities are once again asking lawmakers for more money for medical education, but the fighting over who is best equipped to teach doctors seems to be a thing of the past.

Washingtons two research universities are once again asking lawmakers for extra money for both of their medical-school programs in Spokane.

But the frosty relationship between the University of Washington and Washington State University over medical-school funding seems to be a thing of the past.

Finally, we see this as behind us, said WSU President Kirk Schulz, speaking during a joint interview on the Seattle Channel show Civic Cocktail on Wednesday with UW President Ana Mari Cauce.

Two years ago, the two schools fought publicly over which one was more qualified and capable of quickly expanding doctor training in the state. WSU proposed and ultimately won the right to open its own medical school on its Spokane campus.

That school the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine is on track to admit its first group of students this fall. Its reviewing 340 applications for 60 slots for its program.

The UW, which had partnered with WSU to teach medical students in Spokane, went its own way last year, starting a partnership with Spokanes private Gonzaga University to host its medical-school program. (The UWs cooperative, five-state medical education program is known as WWAMI an acronym formed by the names of the five states that participate: Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho.)

Schulz was not WSU president during the medical-school fight; he joined WSU in June 2016. Cauce became president of the UW in the fall of 2015, after the debate was largely over.

I hate to say it, but I actually like this guy, Cauce joked about Schulz on Wednesday, noting that the two became presidents of their respective universities at similar times, and most of the issues were dealing with are incredibly similar.

Cauce said all of the states four-year public universities and two-year colleges are approaching Olympia this year with a common agenda, in hopes of accomplishing more.

The truth is, a stronger WSU makes the UW stronger, and a strong UW makes a stronger WSU, she said. This state has plenty of room for two top universities.

In the Legislature this year, WSU is requesting $10.8 million to fund 60 first-year and 60 second-year medical school students over the biennium.

The WSU school received preliminary accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education in October. It is named after the universitys late president, Elson Floyd, who died in 2015.

Meanwhile, the UW which is teaching 60 first-year and 40 second-year medical students at Gonzaga this academic year is hoping to add 20 additional students, eventually bringing the total to 80 first-year and 80 second-year students. Its requesting $9.2 million in state funding.

For now, theres enough physical space in Spokane for both programs to continue to share an anatomy lab thats located on the WSU campus, which is located directly across the Spokane River from Gonzaga. The rest of the UWs classes are taught at Gonzagas Schoenberg Center building.

But if the UW gets the OK to increase the size of its program, it will require a new building, said Suzanne Allen, vice dean for academic, rural and regional affairs for the UW School of Medicine.

The lab, where first-year students take anatomy lessons using cadavers in the ground-floor lab on the Riverpointe campus, will be used by medical students from both programs for the next three years, while the WSU ramps up the size of its classes.

The plan is for Gonzaga to raise private funding for a building on its campus, for both anatomy and other classes. The building would be leased to the UW. Its likely to take three or four years to raise the money and construct the building, Allen said.

In 2015, when WSU and UW were battling over funding, it became clear that one of the bottlenecks was a lack of residency positions the finishing years for medical-school graduates that allow them to work with patients and complete their educations.

The Legislature that year put $16 million toward increasing family residency slots, said Ian Goodhew, director of government relations for UW Medicine.

Residencies are funded by federal dollars, but the state money helped make sure there were enough faculty for the programs to be fully accredited, Allen said. As well, it allowed residents to do rotations in clinics; federal dollars only pay for residency rotations that are done in hospitals.

Excerpt from:

WSU, UW look to strengthen their Spokane medical schools | The ... - The Seattle Times

As Congress begins formulating a new budget, some professors and researchers at Harvard Medical School are concerned about potential cuts in federal funding.

While Harvard as a whole received almost $600 million from the federal government in 2016, 69.9 percent of that came from the National Institutes of Health, and Medical School professors say that federal research funding is particularly important for their work. Federal funding for research at Harvard has steadily declined since 2009, leading University President Drew G. Faust to cite the NIH as a major focus of concern during a visit to Washington D.C. in February.

NIHs funds in research grants allow investigators to pursue interesting and novel ideas with a lot of academic freedom and intellectual freedom, said Medical School and pediatrics professor Kenneth D. Mandl. Its a very well-designed system to promote high quality medical research.

Mandl said while he doesnt expect any tectonic shifts in research funding, he thinks there are certain research agencies such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute whose very existence may be in question with the new budget.

If we see those agencies diminished, we would see less research thats evaluative of the healthcare system itself, Mandl said.

Aaron S. Kesselheim 96, a Medical School professor who studies drug approval and drug development laws, said that the potential decreases in funding, combined with inflation, is worrying.

Unfortunately, it may drive some smart people out of the field and out of academia because there just isnt as much funding available to go around, Kesselheim said.

Kesselheim said that most transformative drugs that have been approved by the United States in the last 25 years have had direct origins in publicly funded research.

The kind of therapeutic innovation that is most likely to move the needle clinically comes from these publicly funded origins, Kesselheim said.

Mandl also noted that in the past two years, requirements for receiving NIH funding have also increased, resulting in a more competitive process for grant-seekers and a push for diversification of funding sources. He said he expects that trend to continue in the future.

John N. Campbell, a researcher at the Medical School, said that potential budget cuts made him nervous. Last year, Campbell catalogued 50 distinct brain cell types associated with appetite using a relatively expensive technique called gene expression profiling.

Funding is a worthwhile investment because we learn things we cant find out in any other way, Campbell said. The progress being made now in terms of understanding how the brain works will lead to breakthrough after breakthrough for medicine.

I think we are all a bit nervous about [potential budget cuts], but were staying optimistic and investment in science is always a priority, Campbell said.

Campbell said that in the event of budget cuts, researchers would most likely seek alternative sources of funding through non-profit organizations. Otherwise, Campbell said, the scope of research projects could be reduced.

Beyond the Medical School, professors across Harvard are worried about cuts in research funding despite a record fiscal year. In February, humanities professors expressed concern about the potential cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Environmental studies professors also expect to be affected by potential budget cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Staff writer Alexis J. Ross can be reached at alexis.ross@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @aross125.

Staff writer William L. Wang can be reached at william.wang@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @wlwang20.

See original here:

Med School Professors Worried About Federal Budget - Harvard Crimson

SAN BERNARDINO >> San Bernardino County Supervisors on Tuesday approved, without discussion, a $10 million, five-year agreement to support the effort for a new medical school in Colton.

The California University of Science and Medicines School of Medicine is expected to open in summer 2018 inside temporary headquarters in San Bernardino and then move to its permanent home just north of Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, the county hospital in Colton, said Dr. Dev GnanaDev, founder, president and CEO of CalMed.

Remodeling for the temporary site is ongoing at the former Everest College site at 217 E. Club Center Drive, just west of Waterman Avenue and south of the 10 Freeway.

GnanaDev is also chief of surgery at ARMC and president of the Medical Board of California. Previously, he was a longtime ARMC medical director and is a past president of the California Medical Association.

Originally, CalMed had hoped to open the new medical school in Colton this fall, but GnanaDev said Tuesday, during an interview following the supervisors vote, that it is easier to get necessary accreditations from an existing structure than from a new building.

The initial class will grow from 60 students to 90 the second year and 120 the third year. From then on, each graduating class will start with 120 students, he said.

The new medical school will work to develop additional residency slots at several hospital locations to place its graduates, GnanaDev said.

At another location, also adjacent to ARMC, the California University of Science and Medicine will ultimately include a school to train biomedical engineers, physician assistants and physical therapists, as well as provide nurses with graduate-level education opportunities.

The memorandum of understanding calls for a collaboration in clinical research studies, education and in the delivery and improvement of health care services at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center.

The memorandum will result in the use of the countys discretionary general funding in the amount of $1 million annually for five years, while ARMC will provide an additional $5 million from its Enterprise Fund, according to county documents.

The agreement will terminate if CalMed fails to obtain appropriate accreditations on or before July 1, 2018.

Advertisement

The agreement is a cause of concern for Pomona-based Western Universitys College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific.

Dr. Paula Crone, medical school dean, said, Western U has a 40-year track record of service and success in the Inland Empire and Southern California, and is an essential source of the badly-needed primary care providers in this region.

We have a long-standing relationship with San Bernardino County and ARMC, where our graduates have filled literally thousands of rotation and residency slots over the years, without public funding coming to the university or the college to support that. So anything that might diminish training opportunities for our students and graduates is a blow.

Robert Lovingood, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors, explained in a statement why the board approved the memorandum of understanding.

ARMC has a number of agreements with universities, colleges, junior colleges, and technical and trade schools through which it provides on-site clinical training for students. The training provided at ARMC prepares medical students to obtain their degree, license and/or certification, Lovingood said in the statement.

Riverside and San Bernardino counties have one of the lowest ratios of active patient care physicians. The agreement supports the creation, maintenance and growth of jobs and economic value in the county by offering medical education locally with preference to county residents, which will result in an increased pool of locally-trained health care workers remaining in the area, Lovingood said.

The contribution announced today (Tuesday) from the County of San Bernardino is a wonderful testament to the faith in the mission of California University of Science and Medicine and the value it will provide to the county, community and Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, said Elizabeth Nikels, spokeswoman for the Prime Healthcare Foundation.

California University School of Medicine and the Prime Healthcare Foundation are grateful to San Bernardino County and Arrowhead Regional for their partnership and support as we build a world-class medical school dedicated to training future leaders that will give back to underserved areas like San Bernardino County, she said in a statement.

The CalMed medical school is being financed primarily through a $40 million donation from the Prime Healthcare Foundation, which was founded by Dr. Prem Reddy, a cardiologist who is founder, chairman and president of Ontario-based Prime Healthcare Services.

GnanaDev said he is working to secure additional funding from the state of California.

Prime Healthcare owns and operates 44 acute-care hospitals in California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Alabama and Missouri.

The rest is here:

San Bernardino County awards new Colton medical school a $10 million contract - San Bernardino County Sun

UK announced plans last week to develop a regional medical school campus in Northern Kentucky, in partnership with Northern Kentucky University and St. Elizabeth Healthcare.

Working with outstanding regional partners universities and hospitals we can educate and train more potential doctors and help address the physician shortage in the commonwealth, UK College of Medicine Dean Dr. Robert DiPaola said.

The Lexington campus reached capacity in the number of students its facilities and infrastructure can support.

Currently, the UK College of Medicine enrolls 547 students, with 139 in the most recently admitted class, the class of 2020.

The curriculum and education will be the same as what is provided at the Lexington campus.

UK HealthCare saw NKU and St. Elizabeth as outstanding and qualified institutions in higher education and as regional providers of healthcare.

We will be able to educate more outstanding students. This will be a new opportunity to offer to NKU students and others in the region to continue their education at the highest levels closer to home, DiPaola said. The region, potentially, will have more outstanding clinicians, serving the state and, in particular, Northern Kentucky. It is a win-win-win for the university, the region and our partners.

Four-year regional campuses in Bowling Green and Morehead were also proposed in 2016 by UK.

UK plans to open the regional campus with NKU and St. Elizabeth as early as 2019.

Excerpt from:

UK announces regional medical school partnership with NKU ... - Kentucky Kernel

HERSHEY, Pa. During future physicians four years in medical school, they expect to be exposed to many different environments. They become acquainted with the emergency room, operating room, delivery room and every other room in between. Instructors at Penn State College of Medicine hope to help their students become familiar with one more room the kitchen.

Fourth-year medical students at the college now have an opportunity to participate in a culinary medicine course to learn cooking and nutrition basics, which they can then pass on to patients. Culinary medicine is a new evidence-based field in medicine that blends the art of food and cooking with the science of medicine.

In the United States, the traditional medical approach has been to focus on treatment rather than prevention of disease and illness, said Tomi Dreibelbis, Culinary Medicine course co-director, senior director of educational affairs, and instructor of public health sciences. For the past 100 years, the standard medical school curriculum has required spending only a few days in four years discussing how nutrition affects wellness and the risk of progression of disease. Diet and nutrition will take us either on the path to wellness or on the path to disease.

Dreibelbis has a background as a public health nutritionist and holds a graduate degree in health education. She was inspired by the culinary medicine program at Tulane University School of Medicine and its teaching kitchen where students are required to take nutrition courses throughout their four years of medical school. She visited Tulane in July 2016 and worked with her counterparts there to bring the program to Penn State. The first class launched in September 2016.

Dietary intervention can positively impact health outcomes across the lifespan. Optimal nutrition throughout all phases of life, especially for the population groups that are at high risk for health disparities, must be the primary focus of health promotion and disease prevention, she said.

Nine students have completed the course this semester, which is currently offered as an elective.

The course is held at the Mohler Senior Center, which is located on the edge of the College of Medicine and Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center campus. Use of its kitchen adds an additional dynamic to the course, as members of the senior center participate in the course alongside the students.

Learn more about the course in this Penn State Medicine article.

Read the original:

Culinary Medicine: Teaching the importance of nutrition in medical school - Penn State News

Patients are not as comfortable disclosing health disparities to their physicians as they are with other patients experiencing similar disparities, an issue two Dell Medical School professors hope to address.

The professors, Scott Wallace and Elizabeth Teisberg, are the managing director and executive director of the schools Institute for Value in Health and Care. They developed the idea of Experience Groups, which allow patients with similar health issues to sit together and discuss health challenges, about a decade ago. The group size ranges from six to 10 participants with two facilitators who oversee the group, take notes and pose questions to guide the group toward discussion.

Often time, (health care) services are designed from a physicians point of view, not designed from a patients point of view, Wallace said. We use these Experience Group sessions to bring groups of patients who share a set of circumstances together to talk about what is it like to live with their condition.

Wallace said Experience Groups have been conducted at other hospitals, and they hope to bring the idea to the Dell Medical School soon.

Most hospitals have patient advisory groups (with a mixed group of patients), and what they talk about is parking, food and whether the televisions worked and whether the nurses have been nice to them, because thats the only thing they have in common, Wallace said.

Deborah Kennedy, who has facilitated about seven Experience Groups, said the groups provide clinicians with valuable information about their patients they might not have known before.

As clinicians, we automatically think we have the answer, Kennedy said. If we dont, we like to at least postulate what might be a solution.

The Experience Groups Kennedy oversaw involved people struggling with their weight. Kennedy said she learned to be a part of the background of the discussion and to let the participants speak for themselves, which showed her that having people with similar issues come together can enlighten physicians on issues that might not have come up in a clinical setting.

One of the things (the patients) actually said to me several times is, We dont want a skinny person telling us what to do, Kennedy said. They felt like (the physicians) had no understanding.

Wallace said he and Teisberg decided to share their idea with the Dell Medical School in order to directly help the community, one of the schools core missions.

It was a really appealing idea to come down here and actually be a part of creating a health care system that was committed to improving the health of the people in the community, Wallace said. We described it as (taking) on responsibilities of improving the health of our neighbors, and thats a phenomenal opportunity for someone who is interested in dramatically changing health care.

School Dean Clay Johnston said the Experience Groups provide an innovative outlook on how medicine should be provided for the patients at the school.

Experience Groups are about people at an individual level what theyre experiencing, where they want to go and what they want to do with their lives, Johnston said. They demonstrate the kind of innovation that the school is already catalyzing in a variety of communities and settings throughout Austin and Travis County.

Go here to read the rest:

Professors at Dell Medical School bring new way of patient-to-physician communication - UT The Daily Texan

Thinking about applying to graduate school? Whether you're interested in pursuing an MBA or attending law school or medical school, there are some big decisions to make. To help students find the right school for them, U.S. News & World Report surveys more than 1,970 graduate schools and programs and ranks them according to our methodology.

Here, we offer a sneak peek at the 2018 Best Graduate Schools rankings.

U.S. News surveyed 170 fully accredited medical and osteopathic schools. In alphabetical order, here are the top 10 medical schools for research.

Below are the top 10 schools for primary care, in alphabetical order. More than 10 schools appear because of ties.

The actual ranking and score of these and other graduate schools will be available March 14, 2017, on usnews.com. Use #BestGradSchools to continue the conversation on Twitter and Facebook.

For more in-depth rankings, searchable data and an expanded directory of programs, sign up for the U.S. News Medical School Compass.

The rest is here:

2018 Best Graduate Schools Preview: Top 10 Medical Schools - Yahoo News

SAN BERNARDINO >> San Bernardino County Supervisors on Tuesday approved, without discussion, a $10 million, five-year agreement to support the effort for a new medical school in Colton.

The California University of Science and Medicines School of Medicine is expected to open in summer 2018 inside temporary headquarters in San Bernardino and then move to its permanent home just north of Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, the county hospital in Colton, said Dr. Dev GnanaDev, founder, president and CEO of CalMed.

Remodeling for the temporary site is ongoing at the former Everest College site at 217 E. Club Center Drive, just west of Waterman Avenue and south of the 10 Freeway.

GnanaDev is also chief of surgery at ARMC and president of the Medical Board of California. Previously, he was a longtime ARMC medical director and is a past president of the California Medical Association.

Originally, CalMed had hoped to open the new medical school in Colton this fall, but GnanaDev said Tuesday, during an interview following the supervisors vote, that it is easier to get necessary accreditations from an existing structure than from a new building.

The initial class will grow from 60 students to 90 the second year and 120 the third year. From then on, each graduating class will start with 120 students, he said.

The new medical school will work to develop additional residency slots at several hospital locations to place its graduates, GnanaDev said.

At another location, also adjacent to ARMC, the California University of Science and Medicine will ultimately include a school to train biomedical engineers, physician assistants and physical therapists, as well as provide nurses with graduate-level education opportunities.

The memorandum of understanding calls for a collaboration in clinical research studies, education and in the delivery and improvement of health care services at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center.

The memorandum will result in the use of the countys discretionary general funding in the amount of $1 million annually for five years, while ARMC will provide an additional $5 million from its Enterprise Fund, according to county documents.

The agreement will terminate if CalMed fails to obtain appropriate accreditations on or before July 1, 2018.

Advertisement

The agreement is a cause of concern for Pomona-based Western Universitys College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific.

Dr. Paula Crone, medical school dean, said, Western U has a 40-year track record of service and success in the Inland Empire and Southern California, and is an essential source of the badly-needed primary care providers in this region.

We have a long-standing relationship with San Bernardino County and ARMC, where our graduates have filled literally thousands of rotation and residency slots over the years, without public funding coming to the university or the college to support that. So anything that might diminish training opportunities for our students and graduates is a blow.

Robert Lovingood, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors, explained in a statement why the board approved the memorandum of understanding.

ARMC has a number of agreements with universities, colleges, junior colleges, and technical and trade schools through which it provides on-site clinical training for students. The training provided at ARMC prepares medical students to obtain their degree, license and/or certification, Lovingood said in the statement.

Riverside and San Bernardino counties have one of the lowest ratios of active patient care physicians. The agreement supports the creation, maintenance and growth of jobs and economic value in the county by offering medical education locally with preference to county residents, which will result in an increased pool of locally-trained health care workers remaining in the area, Lovingood said.

The contribution announced today (Tuesday) from the County of San Bernardino is a wonderful testament to the faith in the mission of California University of Science and Medicine and the value it will provide to the county, community and Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, said Elizabeth Nikels, spokeswoman for the Prime Healthcare Foundation.

California University School of Medicine and the Prime Healthcare Foundation are grateful to San Bernardino County and Arrowhead Regional for their partnership and support as we build a world-class medical school dedicated to training future leaders that will give back to underserved areas like San Bernardino County, she said in a statement.

The CalMed medical school is being financed primarily through a $40 million donation from the Prime Healthcare Foundation, which was founded by Dr. Prem Reddy, a cardiologist who is founder, chairman and president of Ontario-based Prime Healthcare Services.

GnanaDev said he is working to secure additional funding from the state of California.

Prime Healthcare owns and operates 44 acute-care hospitals in California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Alabama and Missouri.

Originally posted here:

San Bernardino County awards new Colton medical school a $10 ... - San Bernardino County Sun

WTNH Connecticut News (press release)

New information released on hazmat situation at Yale Medical School WTNH Connecticut News (press release) NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) Officials have released information on what caused several people to fall ill at the Yale School of Medicine last week. Yale officials say independent laboratory tests on items removed from the area showed the presence of ... Chemical Found In Yale Med School Coffee MachineCBS Connecticut all 11 news articles »

See the original post here:

New information released on hazmat situation at Yale Medical School - WTNH Connecticut News (press release)

The State

Bond bill won't pay for USC med school, new college construction The State The medical school remains our No. 1 request, but we understand that the committee is looking specifically at renovation and maintenance projects, USC spokesman Wes Hickman said in a statement. We would argue that a new medical school at BullStreet ...

Read more here:

Bond bill won't pay for USC med school, new college construction - The State

Inside a new University at Buffalo building on Main Street is a mammoth glass atrium capped by seven skylights and filled with temporary scaffolding holding tradesmen working from dawn to dusk five days a week, and sometimes Saturdays.

The workers are adding the interior details of the $375 million Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Main and Allen streets.

The eight-floor building, now 75 percent complete, will open later this year to house an expanding UB medical school.

The school has been steadily adding faculty since it began construction of the downtown building and plans to add 80 new faculty members by 2020 as it gears up to meet the needs of more students.

Workers put the finishing touches on the ceiling of the atrium of the new UB Medical School. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)

The building will have more educational space than the school's current home on UB's South Campus, as well asadvance simulation centers for patient care and updatedlaboratories.

But its design and location with its terra cotta exterior, glass atrium and Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus address is part of a wider university strategy for attracting new doctors to the medical school.

"The atrium was always to be the showcase," said Jennifer A. Kuhn, UB project manager. "The architect always called it the piano nobile."

An average of 380 workers on the site each day are tasked with transforming the 628,000-square-foot building from the ground level to the top of the eighth floor.

"We're in the process of putting the lipstick on, and the finishing touches," said William J. Mahoney, vice president of LPCiminelli, which is overseeing construction.

Atrium features glass panels

Mahoney and UB officials led a walk-through of the building last week to give a peek of progress that has been made and what work remains.

The building which in terms of square footage is the equivalent of 14.6 acres has about $30 million worth of work to go, Mahoney said.

It is the largest construction project in UB's history. It is also, UB says, the largest building dedicated to medical education presently under construction in the United States. More than 3,000 trades workers have left their touch on the complex in the three years it has been under construction.

Outside, workers have been placing terra cotta panels on the building like pieces of a puzzle fitting into place. By late summer, 27,646 of the panels will form a high-performance "skin" of the new building.

Some of the exterior terra cotta as construction starts to take shape at the new UB medical school downtown. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)

Inside, walls are up and the shells of offices are in place. Mechanical and electrical systems are being turned on. Work on medical labs, counters, file drawers, built-in cabinets, flooring, ceiling tiles and light fixtures is under way on many floors, as well as student classrooms and lecture halls.

The building's seven-story atrium is also underway. It will feature 650 ribbon-glass panels made up of 19,000 square feet of glass along the perimeter, as well as a glass rainscreen faade.

Five floors of temporary scaffolding provide work crews access to the perimeter of the atrium to complete finishing work of the building. An interior band of terra cotta panels mirroring the ones on the outside of the building will rim the inside of each floor.

Gradually, the top scaffolding level will be removed as each level is completed. "It's kind of like a train, one car after another, until the final product is complete," Mahoney said.

Workers on scaffolding put the finishing touches on the ceiling of the atrium inside UB's new Medical School in downtown Buffalo. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)

Glass is a big deal, particularly with an atrium that will shed natural light into the center of the building and a small bistro planned for students and faculty on the second floor.

The atrium area, along with lounges, is intended to be a collaborative space for students to meet students and their professors.

"The idea is to create opportunities for people to get together and share ideas," said Gail E. Ettaro, LPCiminelli's senior marketing director.

Building aimed at evolving mission

The building, UB officials hope, will not just provide a new downtown home for a bigger medical school, but will meet new needs as its mission evolves and the school grows.

The new school offers a 178 percent increase in educational space for our medical students and most of those increases occur in the small classroom area, Michael E. Cain, vice president for health sciences and medical school dean, told faculty during a recent address, according to a UB summary. This is by design as we reshape the vision of our medical curriculum.

The medical school had 688 faculty members during the 2011-12 school year, when the new building was still in the planning stages. That number grew to 778 last school year and is expected to be 860 by 2020.

By fall, the first staff members are slated to move into the new building. Classes will start there in January.

A view of the west side from the seventh floor at the new UB medical school. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)

Lab spaces will occupy much of the third, fourth and fifth floors. The sixth floor will contain administrative offices and a clinical competency center for simulated patient work. Administrative offices, along with gross anatomy teaching space, will make up the seventh floor. The eighth floor consists of mechanical systems. The second level will mostly contain classrooms, two large lecture halls, a small bistro and student and faculty lounges.

While most of the medical school will not be accessible to the general public, the building houses the Metro Rail Allen Medical Station and will be part of a sky-bridge connector system to adjacent hospitals and research facilities.

"It's a state-of-the-art medical facility that provides hands-on experiences," Mahoney said.

Follow this link:

UB prepares to debut its $375 million showpiece of a medical school ... - Buffalo News

With the questionable future that many refugees in the United States face, the Alpert Medical School community is taking steps to provide resources and care for refugee children in Rhode Island.

The Refugee Health Clinic at Hasbro Childrens Hospital led by Carol Lewis, associate professor of pediatrics and director of the clinic is an important first stop for child refugees coming to Rhode Island.

Refugees often have difficulties accessing health care during their first year in the country, Lewis said.

(The Refugee Health Clinic) is unique in Rhode Island, Lewis said. We see (the refugees) for their initial evaluations, and they stay with us for their primary care.

Half of Rhode Islands refugees are children, Lewis said, adding that they all go through the clinic. These children often need more care than the clinic can provide. What we do in a 20- to 30-minute visit here is a tiny drop in the bucket of what (the refugees) need out in the community to keep them healthy, she added.

The children often arrive at the clinic with physical health problems, but none of these kids are public health threats, Lewis said, adding that they are so vetted and they have extensive medical exams before being allowed into the country.

The major problems new refugees face include developmental issues and trauma. I have a Syrian family with a nine-year-old kid whos never been to school, Lewis said. In recent years, the clinic has developed community health programs to help these refugees adjust to their new homes.

One of the most exciting things that (has happened) recently is that we received a grant from the Rhode Island Foundation about a year ago to train community health workers, Lewis said. These health workers help refugees navigate the health care system, which is often difficult due to language barriers and bureaucratic red tape, she added.

Lewis also advises Brown Refugee Youth Tutoring and Enrichment, a student group that provides one-on-one in-home tutoring for refugee children. (In-home tutoring) is a wonderful model because, for a lot of refugee families, the costs to go elsewhere for tutoring are too expensive, she said.

BRYTE was founded in 2006 as an undergraduate student group. It now pairs about 130 tutors from Brown with refugee students each year, and recently it moved from the Swearer Center for Public Service to the Med School, where it can leverage the older age and life experience that (medical) school students have, said VyVy Trinh 11 MD17, president of BRYTE.

The tutoring is English language acquisition-focused, Trinh said, adding that English proficiency is often what parents are most concerned about.

This tutoring is valuable because English proficiency and achievement in school are often the biggest predictors of success for refugee children, Lewis said.

Natalie Feinstein 20, a BRYTE tutor, works with Kollali, a fifth-grade Eritrean refugee born in an Ethiopian refugee camp. Feinstein helps Kollali improve her English by working off some general guidelines and training provided by BRYTE, though she largely develops her own lessons. While Feinstein is only officially tasked with tutoring Kollali, she helps all five of Kollalis siblings with their English as well, playing games and completing lessons with them.

The program stays with refugees beyond their first two years in the United States, which many organizations do not do, said Julia Chang 18 MD22, academic-year coordinator and summer camp director for BRYTE.

BRYTE also encourages social advocacy in small ways, Trinh said. Such advocacy can include guidance on applying to college, mentoring and (developing) social-emotional literacy, she added.

Chang, who tutors Monique, an eighteen-year-old refugee from Burundi, said she has developed a strong relationship with her tutee outside of an academic setting, spending time with her and even helping with her driving test. Shes really amazing. Im so happy Ive gotten to know her, Chang said. Shes so beautiful, so smart, really sarcastic and really knows herself.

The program provides BRYTE tutors with many learning opportunities as well, Chang said. Its a bidirectional learning experience, she added. Youre not here to save someone.

Though the Med School only recently took BRYTE under its wing, it has been supportive of the program for a long time, Chang said. In the past, the Med School has provided two grants for BRYTEs summer camp, which hosted 106 refugees this past summer and is currently in the process of raising money for this year. It felt like a really natural movement towards the Med School and a model of acknowledging that health and education intersect in a lot of ways, especially for at-risk populations, Chang added.

The advocacy that BRYTE and community health workers provide for refugees may become more important in the wake of President Trumps executive order on immigration and future related policies, Lewis said. Besides continuing these efforts, theres not really anything that the medical community can do, she said.

People who work with the refugee community saw the effects of the order firsthand. I was really struck when we had (incoming) kids lined up to be seen, and we got emails telling us that they couldnt come, Lewis said, adding that the children were four and five-year-olds. That was kind of heartbreaking.

But members of the refugee community have displayed a remarkable sense of resilience, Trinh said. For many of those families I spoke with (the executive order) was on their minds, but across the board they said, Were doing okay so many Americans have been nice to us.

Link:

Med School programs provide assistance for refugees - The Brown Daily Herald

The Catholic Church has adamantly and historically denounced the practice of abortion in all forms, based on the belief that all life begins at conception.

In direct opposition to the Catholic Church, Georgetown University the oldest Catholic college in the United States is allowing on campus the pro-abortion club, Medical Students for Choice (MSFC).

The organization encourages residency training sites with the intention of becoming abortion providers, according to the groups website.

The goal is apparently not to provide medical students and residents with the best skillset and comprehension to be the finest surgeons or providers of medicine. The goal of MSFC is to train future abortionists with hands-on experience. There are even workshops to provide training in the procedure known as manual vacuum aspiration on papayas (yes, you read that right).

Abortion is not simply the removal of a mass of tissue. It is the termination of human life. It is the brutal removal of an infant from the womb via chemicals, vacuum, or instrumentation. It is not a heroic act but a horrific one. The idea that a premier Catholic university would harbor or even encourage such rebellion to traditional beliefs is appalling.

Related:A Plea for Passionate Pro-Lifers to Unite

The modern Hippocratic Oath taken by many physicians across medical schools nationwide states: Above all, I must not play God. Physicians pledge themselves to a life of service to treat those who are sick not to take the viable lives of those who are the most vulnerable. At a school that has long had such a rich history of faith, the disrespect toward life is immensely disappointing.

In the report by TFP (Tradition Family Property) Student Action, director John Ritchie said, Georgetown University, a Catholic institution, cant claim to be committed to the sanctity and dignity of human life while allowing a club that teaches medical students how to kill unborn children.

Either the university holds to traditional, standard Catholic views or it does not. There is no room for middle ground here.

Most people know the medical pledge attributed to Hippocrates: First do no harm, or in Latin, primum non nocere.Although not considered part of the Hippocratic oath, this pledge certainly sums up what should be the foundation of physician practice. This should be a profession focused entirely on healing, curing, and mending, not a calling to kill.

Related:Seven Victims of the Lefts Hostility Toward Religious Freedom

Those who are pro-life must remain vigilant in standing for the unborn. Science continues to support life in the womb as does the foundation of faith that God is the creator of all human life. And the youngest, most inexperienced in the medical profession should certainly not be led astray at a university of such upstanding caliber.

Katie Nations is a working mother of three young children. She lives in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Visit link:

Why Does Georgetown Med School Have a Pro-Abortion Club? - LifeZette

Fourth-year students from the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine pose outside Yonsei University in Wonju, South Korea in 2016. The students spent a month at the Wonju College of Medicine.

Participants can travel around the world in two evenings during the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicines spring Mini Medical School, which will explore issues relating to global health and international medicine.

The Mini Medical School, titled Bringing Global Health Home, will be held April 5 and 12, from 6 to 8 p.m.both nights. The school, located at 2 Riverside Circle in Roanoke, will serve as the classroom.

With growing awareness and concern about worldwide health disparities, we thought it timely to host an event focusing on these and related issues and how they impact health care here at home, said Dave Trinkle, associate dean for community and culture at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. We will hear from local organizations, faculty members, and some of our students who have traveled internationally and been in the trenches when it comes to global health and international medicine.

The Mini Medical School kicks off April 5 with a presentation by Thomas Kerkering, professor of medicine at the school and chief of infectious diseases at Carilion Clinic. During his 35-year career, Kerkering traveled internationally to put his expertise to work. One of his notable global health-related projects was Ebola work for the World Health Organization in Sierra Leone in 2014.

Kerkerings presentation, What is Global Health, will provide attendees with an introduction to the topic as well as current issues in the field. He will be followed by a series of short presentations by local organizations that are engaged in international medical outreach and education. These will include: TEAM Malawi, Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Churchs Haiti Project, Orphan Medical Network International, Second Presbyterian Church, Kimoyo Ltd, and Global Health Educators.

More here:

Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine's Mini Medical School to focus on global health, international medicine - Augusta Free Press

In uncertain times, conviction is the currency by which we measure the worth of our institutions. And right now, our medical schools need to prove their worth. They should do so by publicly endorsing efforts to save and augment the Affordable Care Act.

You are likely familiar with the fundamentals of the law and the routes it provides to affordable health insurance. For tens of millions of our patients, this means the difference between sickness and health, and even life and death.

Estimates suggest that increased coverage prevents nearly 44,000 deaths every year. The law also discards the barbaric practice of denying insurance for pre-existing conditions and offers profound advantages for womens health care. And students might appreciate that they can stay on their parents insurance until age 26, saving hundreds or thousands of dollars.

To a greater or lesser extent, this is common knowledge. But the perspective held by a growing number of medical students is somewhat foreign to most people outside the profession, and even some people within. To understand it, we should recall how the United States approached medicine until just a few years ago.

Most developed countries have a national health care system. For them, medicine is something of a social creed. But in the United States, health care is an individual aspiration. There is no overarching societal desire to ensure everyone has access.

That mentality also permeates the practice of medicine. We focus on the patient in front of us and tend to lose track of the larger world beyond the office or hospital walls. If a patient does not have insurance, that is just the way it is, and we move on.

However, because of the Affordable Care Act, we are the first generation of medical students raised with a different mentality. Our classes reverberate with a new conceptual framework that is to drive our era of medicine: the idea that health care, rather than being a distant dream for many, might be there for everyone. It suggests, finally, a national alignment with the philosophy of endless compassion intrinsic to medicine.

That philosophy underpins our aspirations as future physicians. We spend our formative years not only crafting our knowledge, but also grasping for that impossible goal of limitless empathy. It should come as no surprise, then, that we rose quickly to the Affordable Care Acts defense. Within weeks of Trumps election, a student-led movement called #ProtectOurPatients claimed nearly 5,000 members and supporters across 150 medical schools and every state. We rallied our classmates, delivered petitions to Congress, and laid siege to congressional phone lines to support our patients.

So why do we now ask our universities to stand by the ACA? Because something as simple as a public statement, seemingly mere words on paper, gathers energies that cannot otherwise be harnessed.

My fellow students at Georgetown saw this recently when our faculty condemned the executive order on immigration, explicitly calling for a unified front against that abomination. It is always eye-catching when a major institution breaks from seasoned neutrality to defend its values.

Of course, you might think Obamacare is a less clear-cut ideological battle. To some extent this is true. There is ample room to debate its flaws and the appropriate remedies. But the cold, indifferent idea of repeal or anemic replacement is fundamentally incompatible with the principles of medicine.

To put it bluntly, show me a medical school that doesnt embrace the call of philanthropy and fraternity, that doesnt demand we elevate the neediest among us, and Ill show you where not to study medicine.

But I am willing to bet that school does not exist. I am willing to bet that every medical university is born from that ethos of endless compassion, carefully molded into establishments of service and sacrifice. The foundations rise from an agape love for our patients and communities. Thirty million people suddenly robbed of health care does not align with a single pillar of that practice.

Having been made in this image, there is an indisputable moral obligation for these institutions to oppose grievous violations of decency. We saw it with the travel ban. Now we need to see it in health care. The outrage over ruthless discrimination that brought to bear the strength of our communities is the same outrage we have felt for years as the Affordable Care Acts opponents spread lies about death panels and mythical economic destruction, lies that may literally cost tens of thousands of people their lives.

Universities can remain neutral when rational debate flourishes on all sides. But until then, the ACA deserves a strong defense. Medical schools should denounce repeal efforts and stand by our patients with the same compassion the schools instilled in us.

A version of this piece first appeared in The Hoya.

See the original post:

Why Medical Students Are Demanding Our Schools Stand Up For The Affordable Care Act - Huffington Post

Black and Asian medical school students are less likely to be selected for membership in a prestigious medical honor society, Alpha Omega Alpha (AA), than white medical school students, according to a Yale-led study. The disparity suggests bias in the AA membership selection process, which could negatively affect opportunities for minority medical school students, note the researchers.

The study was published March 6 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Studies have demonstrated racial and ethnic inequities in medicine, including disparities in the receipt of awards, research funding, and promotions. Yet few studies have examined the link between race and ethnicity and opportunities for medical school students.

Medical students are eligible for AA membership if they rank in the top quartile of their class and are selected by a committee at their institution. Society membership is important because members are more likely to get into the residency program of their choice, and more likely to attain the rank of full professor, dean, or department chair than nonmembers, the researchers said. Yale is one of the few medical schools in the United States that does not offer AA membership.

To investigate, the Yale research team analyzed data from the Electronic Residency Application Service, the official service that medical students in the United States use to apply to residency programs. Their analysis included 4,655 U.S. medical students from 123 medical schools during the 2014-2015 academic year who applied to one of 12 residency programs at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

The researchers found that the odds of AA membership for white students were nearly six times greater than black students, and nearly two times greater than Asian students.

In our fully adjusted model which takes into account measures of professionalism, leadership, research, and standardized test scores underrepresented minorities are still less likely to be AA members, said first author Dr.Dowin Boatright, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program scholar.

The study did not, however, find a significant difference in AA membership between white and Hispanic students, which the researchers attributed to a too-small sample size of Hispanics.

The findings suggest potential bias in the AA membership selection process, which could limit opportunities for black and Asian medical students. For example, non-members may be automatically screened out by competitive residency programs that use membership as a filter, Boatright noted.

We look at the pipeline of physicians entering into medicine, and theres talk about how we need to increase the number of underrepresented minorities that are becoming physicians, said Boatright. This study shows there is some systematic bias at the level of medical schools that has not been addressed.

Understanding the reasons for and addressing bias in all aspects of medical education, including the selection process for AA membership, is critical if we are to address the crucial issue of eliminating bias in medical education and enhancing diversity in the physician workforce, said Dr. Patrick OConnor, the Dan and Amanda Adams Professor and chief of general internal medicine and a study author. This study sheds light on potential bias related to an important metric by which students at many U.S. medical schools may be evaluated.

Other study authors include Dr. David Ross, Edward Moore, and senior author Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith.

This work was supported by funds from Dr. Rosemarie Fisher, associate dean of graduate medical education at the Yale School of Medicine and designated institutional official for Yale New Haven Hospital. Ross and Moore are co-founders of Scutmonkey Consulting, LLC.

Link:

Study finds racial disparities in top medical society membership - Yale News

Inside a new University at Buffalo building on Main Street is a mammoth glass atrium capped by seven skylights and filled with temporary scaffolding holding tradesmen working from dawn to dusk five days a week, and sometimes Saturdays.

The workers are adding the interior details of the $375 million Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Main and Allen streets.

The eight-floor building, now 75 percent complete, will open later this year to house an expanding UB medical school.

The school has been steadily adding faculty since it began construction of the downtown building and plans to add 80 new faculty members by 2020 as it gears up to meet the needs of more students.

The building will have more educational space than the school's current home on UB's South Campus, as well asadvance simulation centers for patient care and updatedlaboratories.

But its design and location with its terra cotta exterior, glass atrium and Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus address is part of a wider university strategy for attracting new doctors to the medical school.

The opening underneath the building that will connect Main Street and Washington Street. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)

"The atrium was always to be the showcase," said Jennifer A. Kuhn, UB project manager. "The architect always called it the piano nobile."

An average of 380 workers on the site each day are tasked with transforming the 628,000-square-foot building from the ground level to the top of the eighth floor.

"We're in the process of putting the lipstick on, and the finishing touches," said William J. Mahoney, vice president of LPCiminelli, which is overseeing construction.

Atrium features glass panels

Mahoney and UB officials led a walk-through of the building last week to give a peek of progress that has been made and what work remains.

The building which in terms of square footage is the equivalent of 14.6 acres has about $30 million worth of work to go, Mahoney said.

It is the largest construction project in UB's history. It is also, UB says, the largest building dedicated to medical education presently under construction in the United States. More than 3,000 trades workers have left their touch on the complex in the three years it has been under construction.

Outside, workers have been placing terra cotta panels on the building like pieces of a puzzle fitting into place. By late summer, 27,646 of the panels will form a high-performance "skin" of the new building.

Some of the exterior terra cotta as construction starts to take shape at the new UB medical school downtown. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)

Inside, walls are up and the shells of offices are in place. Mechanical and electrical systems are being turned on. Work on medical labs, counters, file drawers, built-in cabinets, flooring, ceiling tiles and light fixtures is under way on many floors, as well as student classrooms and lecture halls.

The building's seven-story atrium is also underway. It will feature 650 ribbon-glass panels made up of 19,000 square feet of glass along the perimeter, as well as a glass rainscreen faade.

Five floors of temporary scaffolding provide work crews access to the perimeter of the atrium to complete finishing work of the building. An interior band of terra cotta panels mirroring the ones on the outside of the building will rim the inside of each floor.

Gradually, the top scaffolding level will be removed as each level is completed. "It's kind of like a train, one car after another, until the final product is complete," Mahoney said.

Workers on scaffolding put the finishing touches on the ceiling of the atrium inside UB's new Medical School in downtown Buffalo. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)

Glass is a big deal, particularly with an atrium that will shed natural light into the center of the building and a small bistro planned for students and faculty on the second floor.

The atrium area, along with lounges, is intended to be a collaborative space for students to meet students and their professors.

"The idea is to create opportunities for people to get together and share ideas," said Gail E. Ettaro, LPCiminelli's senior marketing director.

Building aimed at evolving mission

The building, UB officials hope, will not just provide a new downtown home for a bigger medical school, but will meet new needs as its mission evolves and the school grows.

The new school offers a 178 percent increase in educational space for our medical students and most of those increases occur in the small classroom area, Michael E. Cain, vice president for health sciences and medical school dean, told faculty during a recent address, according to a UB summary. This is by design as we reshape the vision of our medical curriculum.

The medical school had 688 faculty members during the 2011-12 school year, when the new building was still in the planning stages. That number grew to 778 last school year and is expected to be 860 by 2020.

By fall, the first staff members are slated to move into the new building. Classes will start there in January.

A view of the west side from the seventh floor at the new UB medical school. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)

Lab spaces will occupy much of the third, fourth and fifth floors. The sixth floor will contain administrative offices and a clinical competency center for simulated patient work. Administrative offices, along with gross anatomy teaching space, will make up the seventh floor. The eighth floor consists of mechanical systems. The second level will mostly contain classrooms, two large lecture halls, a small bistro and student and faculty lounges.

While most of the medical school will not be accessible to the general public, the building houses the Metro Rail Allen Medical Station and will be part of a sky-bridge connector system to adjacent hospitals and research facilities.

"It's a state-of-the-art medical facility that provides hands-on experiences," Mahoney said.

Follow this link:

UB prepares to debut its showpiece of a medical school - The ... - Buffalo News