Year-in-Review – News at OU

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As the calendar flips to a new year, many organizations compile year-in-review stories to recognize the previous 365 days and set the stage for future successes and OUWB is among them.

Based on levels of engagement via the OUWB website and social channels, the articles below are the schools top stories for 2019. (Click on the links in the headlines to read the full story.)

Emergency physicians group names OUWB student Outstanding Medical Student of the Year

OUWB M4 Amanda Amen was named 2019 Michigan College of Emergency Physicians (MCEP) Outstanding Medical Student of the Year.

According to MCEP, the award annually recognizes an outstanding medical student from a Michigan medical school who demonstrates excellence in his/her studies and displays a genuine enthusiasm for pursuing a career in emergency medicine.

Amen was presented the award in early December.

Full circle: OUWB students deliver babies alongside doctor who delivered them

When Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine student Kristin LeMarbe has her upcoming OB-GYN clerkship at Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, one aspect will be the culmination of a full circle.

Thats because its anticipated that LeMarbe will deliver a baby alongside Mark Dykowski, M.D. the same doctor who delivered her as a baby.

LeMarbe will be the fifth OUWB student delivered by Dykowski and to have the opportunity to work alongside the OUWB clinical faculty member in the delivery room as part of their medical training. The others are Jennifer Klei, Meredith Allen, Katherine Griese, M.D., and Lauren Lendzion, M.D.

Street Medicine program launches at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine

Students from Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine are taking to the streets of Pontiac through a new program aimed at helping individuals who are homeless and need medical care.

OUWBs Street Medicine program the first of its kind in Oakland County began Friday, Nov. 22, when the first group of students set out to help those in need at the Hope Hospitality & Warming Center in Pontiac.

Six OUWB students named outstanding for 2018-19

Six Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine students received Outstanding Student Awards for 2018-19 for work in and out of the classroom.

The annual awards are given to three rising M2 and three rising M3 students.

The three rising M2 students named Outstanding Students for 2018-19 were Jackson Harley, Grace Peterson, and Jamie Simpson.

Rising M3 students were Megan McCrohan, Manraj Sekhon, and Aryana Sharrak.

OUWB alumni are making their mark in medicine

Five classes have graduated from Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine and the growing number of OUWB alumni are increasingly making their mark on the field of medicine across the country.

Information provided by alumni to OUWB officials shows grads continually find success in various ways, such as becoming chief residents, being appointed to fellowships and leadership positions, and earning various other types of accolades.

Graduate of OUWBs inaugural class to join faculty at Mass Gen

A graduate of Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicines charter class has been appointed to the faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital part of an incredible journey that she says traces to her first interview day at OUWB.

Starting next July, Amanda Xi, M.D., OUWB Class of 2015, will join the faculty at Mass Gen the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. She is scheduled to start after completion of a one-year anesthesia critical care fellowship.

In addition to the stories noted above, annual events at OUWB garnered a significant amount of online interest and finished in the list of top 10 stories for 2019. They are listed separately below.

Class of 2019 celebrates Match Day

On Friday, March 15, the Class of 2019 learned which hospitals and medical facilities they will be heading to for their medical residencies upon graduation from Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine in May.

OUWB graduates fifth class of physicians

OUWB graduated its fifth class of physicians on the campus of Oakland University surrounded by faculty mentors, family and friends who cheered, laughed and cried during the joyful commencement ceremony for the Class of 2019.

OUWB White Coat Ceremony welcomes ninth class of medical students

The Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine Class of 2023 received its official welcome to the school and field of health care during a White Coat Ceremony held Friday, Aug. 9.

Michiganian of the Year inducts 20 OUWB students into Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society

A Beaumont Health breast cancer surgeon named a Michiganian of the Year this week helped induct 20 students from Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicines Class of 2020 into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society.

For more information, contact Andrew Dietderich, marketing writer, OUWB, atadietderich@oakland.edu.

Follow OUWB on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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Year-in-Review - News at OU

‘Ty Warner is in the House, and He is All Business’ – US Lacrosse Magazine

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Ernestine Warner first learned about the finalists for the George Boiardi Hard Hat Award like most fans of the Premier Lacrosse League. She was scanning Instagram. The difference is her son was one of the nominees.

This wasnt the first time an accomplishment slipped her middle childs mind. Tyler Warner already has the bedside manner of a veteran surgeon. Hes also quick to downplay his achievements. In an email response to an interview request for this story, Warner described himself as one of the least interesting dudes in the sport.

Sometimes I think he is humble to a fault, says Mark Warner, Tylers father, a health-care administrator.

That might sound disorienting if you watched Warner on Saturdays this summer for the PLL champion Whipsnakes or during Yales NCAA title run in 2018.

When you talk to him, he's quiet and pretty understated, but he is a competitor, says Jim Stagnitta, the head coach of Whipsnakes LC. When he's on the field, he's as tough as anyone I've been around. Ever.

Most highlights in the PLLs Top 50 Player rankings feature diving goals and outlandish assists. Warners clip is the opposite of flashy. Atlas midfielder Joel Tinney tries to back him down. Warner stands his ground. He keeps applying pressure, then manhandles Tinney to the turf.

Thats one of the things I like about the PLL, Warner says. You can kind of get away with being a little extra physical, which is fun for the short sticks like myself.

"I play with that chip that if you're actually stupid enough to dodge me, it serves you right when you can't get by me. That's always my mentality.

If youre not watching closely, you might not notice Warner at all. Its almost a guarantee given his position. If his name is never mentioned during a broadcast, he played great. Though their abbreviation is the longest, short stick defensive midfielders (SSDM) often get the shortest amount of recognition.

Obviously they don't get too much love, but they're kind of like a cornerback in football, says Whipsnakes captain and long-stick midfielder Michael Ehrhardt, who calls Warner a silent assassin. Those are some of the best athletes on the field. They're getting dodged all the time, nonstop.

Warner will reunite with several of his fellow Whipsnakes including Ehrhardt, the MVP of the 2018 World Championship in San Antonio this weekend for the Spring Premiere. Warner is one of 11 players making their U.S. senior team debuts.

Out of the six Whipsnakes on the U.S. roster, five primarily play on the defensive end.

It wasnt always that way for Warner. At Baldwin High School on Long Island, he was the one initiating dodges. His highlight reel from his senior year is a string of textbook on-the-run and time-and-room shots. When he needed a breather, he played attack.

An errant pass during an early-fall scrimmage in his freshman year at Yale altered his path.

When I was switched to d-middie I remember being pissed at first, Warner says. But I also knew that it was a way for me to play, and if I was going to play that position for the rest of my career, I was going to try to be damn good at it.

Warner embraced the new challenge. If he couldnt score goals, then hed make it his mission to deny them. He takes matchups personally. Dodges are an insult. He dissects game film on every potential opponent, so he already knows how theyll try to get by him. They rarely do.

I can't think of a short stick d-middie I've had who was a better shut-down, take-his-man-out-of-the-game than he is, Stagnitta says.

Stagnitta had such confidence in Warners cover capabilities that hed often match him against attackmen. He considers Warner almost like a long pole.

Warners objective isnt just to guard his mark; its to erase him. Duke freshman midfielder Nakeie Montgomery had eight goals in three games during the NCAA tournament before squaring off against the Elis at Gillette Stadium.

The Yale coaching staff hadnt watched Duke until the final four.

Luckily, thought Andrew Baxter, Yales defensive coordinator, We have Tyler.

Montgomery didnt score in the championship game. He didnt even take a shot. Yale prevailed 13-11 and claimed its first national title since 1883.

His confidence and his beliefs in the team were a huge part of our success that year, says Baxter, now the head coach at Fairfield. Guys fed off him every day in practice and in the games. He didn't fear anyone or any team.

"I play with that chip that if you're actually stupid enough to dodge me, it serves you right when you can't get by me, Warner says. That's always my mentality.

That chip was grew bigger thanks to the PLLs player rankings. Warner was 39th.

I definitely think Ty should have been a lot higher, but I just think that comes with time though, especially in our sport. Ehrhardt says. If not the best d-middie right now, then he's definitely in the top two or three in the whole world.

Ehrhardts initial questions about his teams short sticks were answered on June 1 at Gillette Stadium during Whipsnakes first game against Chaos. He watched Warner stand up Eric Scott, knock him off his feet, then clear the ball.

Ty Warner is in the house, and he is all business, Ehrhardt thought.

June 1 was also the estimated start date of the Lipogems Prospective Study at The Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. The official title is Adipose Derived Stromal Cell Transplantation as an Adjunct to Arthroscopy in Treatment of Effusion Synovitis of the Early Degenerative Knee.

One of the two contacts listed is Dr. Riley J. Williams III, an orthopedic surgeon at HSS whos the medical director for the Brooklyn Nets and a team physician for USA Basketball. The other contact is Tyler Warner.

***

Warners interest in medicine took root at about the same time he first picked up a lacrosse stick in the fourth grade.

I think he wanted to be a fireman first, but it quickly became he wanted to be a doctor and stuck with it, Ernestine Warner, a residential mortgage consultant, says.

Warner had watched family members struggle tremendously with their health but only sought out medical help once it was too late. His pediatrician, Dr. Greta Rainsford, dispelled his fears. At her office in Hempstead, where shes practiced for 55 years, Rainsford seemed to know all the answers and exactly which treatment would help him feel better. He realized he wanted to have a similar impact on others.

That ambition kept him going despite a mountain of coursework at Yale where he was an ecology and evolutionary biology major on a pre-med track.

He had one of most intense workloads between lacrosse and schoolwork that you can ever imagine, says Jerry OConnor, who started at defense on the 2018 national championship team.

This is coming from an Investment Banking Analyst at Goldman Sachs who also studied at the London School of Economics. When OConnor would search for an empty room in the basement of the Watson Center, it seemed like Ben Reeves, the 2018 Tewaaraton Award winner who was also pre-med, and Warner were always there. It was as if they had never left.

During their senior year, Warner and Reeves opted for an off-campus apartment instead of the lacrosse house like the majority of the seniors.

He was never reaching for the limelight, OConnor says of Warner. He always worked quietly in the shadows.

While most of Warners teammates and coaches describe him as quiet or reserved in conversation, hes equally as vocal and passionate during play. Lacrosse offers a release. Anytime Warner made a takeaway in practice at Yale, hed always shout the same thing.

Cookies!

Hed often collect the ground ball and head the other way before his teammates knew what happened.

Its the same fierceness his parents see when they play Jeopardy! The Warners keep score.

The most important thing during Jeopardy! [to Tyler] is that Mark loses, Ernestine says. If anyone is going to win besides himself, it cannot be Mark.

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'Ty Warner is in the House, and He is All Business' - US Lacrosse Magazine

Tracking the movements, minds of surgeons to improve performance – Stanford Medical Center Report

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Then, they suit up for data collection. Each surgeon dons a special lab coat that holds a variety of wired sensors. Three motion sensors so fine they fit under surgical gloves poke out of the sleeves and are secured to the thumbs, index fingers and wrists with a piece of tape. Finally, Pugh sets up audio and video recordings, which run as the surgeon operates. The integrated approach to data collection not only shows how the surgeons hands move, but also how they talk through tricky parts of a procedure and how their brain waves spike or dip.

So far, the idea of surgical wearables has been met with mixed reactions, Pugh said. Mostly, theres a sense of excitement and an eagerness to participate, she said. But theres concern too namely, that they would be used to unfairly judge a surgeons skills during a difficult procedure. Its true that the wearables could be used to one day test surgical skill, but to Pugh, it would be a mistake to limit the data to that purpose.

To me, collecting surgical data is less about evaluating the skill of a surgeon and far more about quantifying what it took to take care of a specific patient, Pugh said.

She gives an example: Patients in intensive care units often need a central line, a type of IV that can withdraw fluid or deliver medicine. But inserting a central like into the vein of a frail 90-year-old patient is extremely different than doing so in a morbidly obese patient, or a patient who already has had multiple lines placed during previous care. We all know the difference as practiced physicians, but theres no data to show it, Pugh said. We walk around with more detailed data about our bank accounts than how we perform clinical procedures, which are 10-times more complex.

Pugh and her team are still just getting off the starting blocks, but the data theyve collected through early pilot studies and at a handful of medical and surgical conferences have already started to yield intriguing insights through data patterns.

Instead of parsing every dataset of a surgery, Pugh and her team look for overarching trends. The motion-tracking sensors feed visual data back to a computer, allowing the researchers to see movement patterns of a surgeons hands, including where they pause and where they spend more time.

People would ask me, Why would you want to measure surgical technique? Everyone operates so differently. But our data essentially shows the opposite. Whether surgeons use different instruments or add their own finesses to a procedure doesnt really matter, Pugh said. The overall movement patterns that are generated at the end are very similar, so long as there arent complications such as abnormal patient anatomy or the rare surgical error.

Such data patterns can show where surgeries hit a snag. Take, for instance, a successful surgery with a movement pattern that, at the end, looks roughly like the body and wings of a butterfly. Those who perform a surgery without complications will see a movement pattern in the rough shape of a butterfly. Those who dont might have a pattern with lopsided wings, or one with two bodies. The motion sensors that track that surgeons fingers and hands produce a very visual result, Pugh said. And whats even more interesting to see is that there doesnt seem to be a correlation with instrument choice or whether the surgeon switched step 5 for step 6 its the patients anatomy that most accurately correlates to the end pattern.

The intertwining data streams from various wearables on the surgeons body can reveal quite a bit about the procedure and the patient on the table, but more than that, Pugh and her colleagues see it as a data-first approach to teaching, learning and improvement.

The innovative research led by Dr. Pughs team will provide incredible data-informed insights into surgeon efficiency of motion, tactile pressure and cognitive load while performing a variety of medical and surgical tasks, said Mary Hawn, MD, professor and chair of surgery. These types of data could be used to identify when a surgeon has mastered a procedure and when there may be a deficit.

Some of the wearable applications are still a ways off, Pugh said, as the technology is now only used for procedures on mannequins and tissue bits. But there is one wearable Pugh has tested in the operating room: the EEG sensor.

During two surgeries, a gall bladder removal and an appendectomy, Pugh has volunteered to stick the brain-wave-reading sensor onto her forehead. First we just need to verify that it works in the OR and that the data comes in successfully, Pugh said. And, so far, it does. Through the EEG data, Pughs team could see that the peaks of Pughs brain waves while operating corresponded with the most trying moments of the surgery, while lower level activity synchronized with menial surgical tasks, like suturing.

After a successful surgery, Pugh closed the patient and left the OR, forgetting to remove the long strip on her forehead. My colleagues who are aware of my research saw the EEG sensor and immediately knew what I had been doing, she said. Now, Pughs getting peppered with the same question: When can others test out the technology?

This is an entirely new data endeavor; were learning in real time how best to propel this work, analyze the data and fast-track it in a safe way so that other surgeons can begin to use it in their ORs, too, Pugh said. Right now, its just me whos tested it during surgery, but my big dream is to have this be routine. I cant tell you all the ways the data will be used, but it will definitely improve the care we provide.

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Dr. Sam Brooks, pioneer in breast cancer research, dies at 91 – The South End

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Samuel Carroll Brooks Jr., Ph.D., a retired professor of Biochemistry at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, died Dec. 15 after a battle with cancer.

Dr. Brooks, a resident of Steamboat Springs, Colo., was a faculty member from 1959 to 2006. He was also the former deputy director of Chemistry and chief of Endocrinology at the Karmanos Cancer Institute. He was widely known for his scientific and scholarship contributions to breast cancer research. He was the first to describe the estrogen receptor in breast cancer cell line MCF-7, the first human breast cancer cell line produced. He characterized the line, and was instrumental in recognizing the importance of the estrogen receptor in regulating breast cancer growth. This research led to the development of a clinical laboratory test for estrogen receptor used to determine which patients are eligible for treatment with anti-estrogen drugs.

He also worked to characterize the MCF10 cell lines that led to the first continuously growing line of human pre-neoplastic breast cells, which allow researchers to study the earliest events in breast cancer progression and to test strategies to interfere with those events.

During his career at Karmanos and WSU, Dr. Brooks maintained an unbroken string of continuous funding from his first grant in 1968 until his retirement in 2005, one of the longest records of continuous research funding in the universitys history.

He was a charter member of the WSU Academy of Scholars, and made many contributions on behalf of the university, School of Medicine, Cancer Biology, Oncology, Faculty Senate,and his Department of Biochemistry.In addition to his contributions in research, Dr. Brooks was also an outstanding mentor to numerous graduate and medical students, as well as junior faculty. He taught many graduate and medical school courses, and was the original principal investigator of the WSU T32 NCI Training Grant for the Cancer Biology Program, serving as its director until 2005. Dr. Brooks initiated a similar research training program with Department of Defensefunding for undergraduates from 1991-1996. He headed the WSU Cancer Biology Graduate Program from 1994-2005 and served as the director of Education at Karmanos and the WSU School of Medicine Admissions Committee. He was named as Outstanding Teacher of the Year by the School of Medicine student body, and was widely respected by associates and students.He received the School of Medicine Distinguished Service Award in 2000 and Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.

Dr. Brooks is survived by Frieda Brooks, his wife of 58 years; children Katie Brooks Robertson and husband Mike of Fishers, Ind., and Carroll Brooks and wife Jamie of Seoul, South Korea; grandchildren Samuel, Phillip, Jake, Lauren and Ben; and many nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his brother James Webster Brooks and son James Winfried Brooks.

Dr. Brooks was born and raised in Winchester, Va. He received his bachelors degree from Carnegie Mellon University and masters and doctorate degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He served in the United States Army and was promoted from Lieutenant to Captain during the Korean War.

In his free time, Dr. Brooks enjoyed traveling, skiing, reading WWII history novels, watching Wisconsin Badgers football and spending time with family and friends. He will be fondly remembered for his kindness, sense of humor, knack for storytelling, and his love of animals.

A celebration of life will take place at 11 a.m. Dec. 29 at St. Martin-Tours Catholic Church, 400 Sharp Ave., in Oak Creek, Colo. Memorial contributions may be made in his name to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northwest Colorado, 325 7th St., Steamboat Springs, CO. 80487.

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Dr. Sam Brooks, pioneer in breast cancer research, dies at 91 - The South End

Cracking the Fever-Autism Mystery – Harvard Medical School

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For many years, the parents of children with autism have reported that behavioral symptoms diminished when the child had a fever. The fever phenomenon has been documented in at least two large-scale studies over the past 15 years, but the reasons behind it have continued to mystify scientists.

Now, a new study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and MIT sheds light on the cellular mechanisms that appear to underlie this phenomenon.

In a study of mice, published Dec. 18 inNature, the researchers found that in some cases mimicking bacterial infection, an immune molecule called IL-17a is released and suppresses a small region of the brains cortex linked to social behavioral deficits in animal models.

Our findings finger the signaling cascade that leads to temporary alleviation of autism-like symptoms upon exposure to inflammatory conditions, highlighting the complex interplay between the nervous and immune systems in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, said study co-corresponding authorJun Huh, assistant professor of immunology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS.

People have seen this phenomenon before [in people with autism], but its the kind of story that is hard to believe, which I think stems from the fact that we did not know the mechanism, saidGloria Choi, the Samuel A. Goldblith Career Development Assistant Professor of Applied Biology and an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT. Now the field, including my lab, is trying hard to show how this worksall the way from the immune cells and molecules to receptors in the brainand how those interactions lead to behavioral changes.

Although findings in mice do not always translate into humans, the study may help guide the development of strategies that could help reduce some behavioral symptoms of autism or other neurologic disorders, said Choi, who is also a faculty member of MITs Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.

The lead authors of the research are MIT graduate student Michael Douglas Reed and MIT postdoctoral fellow Yeong Shin Yim.

Immune influence

Choi and Huh previously explored other links between inflammation and autism. In 2016,they showedthat mice born to mothers who experience severe infections during pregnancy are much more likely to show behavioral symptoms such as deficits in sociability, repetitive behaviors and abnormal communication. They found these symptoms stem from exposure to maternal IL-17a, which produces defects in a specific brain region of the developing embryo. The brain region, S1DZ, is part of the somatosensory cortex and believed to be responsible for sensing where the body is in space.

Immune activation in the mother leads to very particular cortical defects, and those defects are responsible for inducing abnormal behaviors in offspring, Choi said.

A link between infection during pregnancy and autism in the offspring has also been documented in humans. A 2010 study that included children born in Denmark between 1980 and 2005 found that severe viral infections during the first trimester of pregnancy led to a threefold increase in risk for autism, and serious bacterial infections during the second trimester were linked with a 1.42-fold increase in risk. These infections included influenza, viral gastroenteritis and severe urinary tract infections.

In the new study, Choi and Huh turned their attention to the often-reported link between fever and reduction of autism symptoms.

We wanted to ask whether we could use mouse models of neurodevelopmental disorders to recapitulate this phenomenon, Choi said. Once you see the phenomenon in animals, you can probe the mechanism.

The researchers began by studying mice that exhibited behavioral symptoms due to exposure to inflammation during gestation. They injected these mice with a bacterial component called LPS, which induces a fever response, and found that the animals social interactions were temporarily restored to normal.

Further experiments revealed that during inflammation these mice produce IL-17a, which binds to receptors in S1DZthe same brain region shown to be affected by maternal inflammation. The experiments showed that IL-17a reduces neural activity in S1DZ, making mice temporarily more interested in interacting with fellow mice.

When researchers inhibited IL-17a or knocked out the receptors for IL-17a, mice did not experience a reversal of symptoms, a finding that pinpointed IL-17a as the responsible trigger. The experiments also showed that simply raising mices body temperature did not have any effect on behavior, offering further evidence that IL-17a is, indeed, the critical player behind reversal of symptoms.

This suggests that the immune system uses molecules like IL-17a to directly talk to the brain, and it actually can work almost like a neuromodulator to bring about these behavioral changes, Choi said. Our study provides another example as to how the brain can be modulated by the immune system.

Whats remarkable about this paper is that it shows that this effect on behavior is not necessarily a result of fever but the result of cytokines being made, said Dan Littman, the Helen L. and Martin S. Kimmel Professor of Molecular Immunology at New York University, who was not involved in the study. Theres a growing body of evidence that the central nervous system, in mammals at least, has evolved to be dependent to some degree on cytokine signaling at various times during development or postnatally.

Behavioral effects

The researchers then performed the same experiments in three additional mouse models of neurologic disorders. These mice lack a gene linked to autism and similar disorderseitherShank3,Cntnap2orFmr1. These mice all show deficits in social behavior similar to those of mice exposed to inflammation in the womb, even though the origin of their symptoms is different.

Injecting those mice with LPS did produce inflammation, but it did not have any effect on their behavior. The reason for that, the researchers found, is that in these mice, inflammation did not stimulate IL-17a production. However, if the researchers injected IL-17a into these mice, their behavioral symptoms did improve.

This suggests that mice who are exposed to inflammation during gestation end up with their immune systems somehow primed to more readily produce IL-17a upon exposure to other inflammatory conditions later in their life. Choi and Huh havepreviously shownthat the presence of certain bacteria in the gut can also prime IL-17a responses. They are now investigating whether the same gut-residing bacteria contribute to the LPS-induced reversal of social behavior symptoms that they found in the newNaturestudy.

Huh and Chois labs are also exploring whether any immune molecules other than IL-17a may affect the brain and behavior.

Whats fascinating about this communication is the immune system directly sends its messengers to the brain, where they work as if theyre brain molecules, to change how the circuits work and how the behaviors are shaped, Choi said.

It was amazing to discover that the same immune molecule, IL-17a, could have dramatically opposite effects depending on context: Promoting autism-like behaviors when it acts on the developing fetal brain and ameliorating autism-like behaviors when it modulates neural activity in the adult mouse brain, Huh said. This is the degree of complexity we are trying to make sense of.

The research was funded by the Jeongho Kim Neurodevelopmental Research Fund, Perry Ha, the Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research, the Simons Center for the Social Brain, the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative, the Champions of the Brain Weedon Fellowship, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Adapted from an MITnews release

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Women more likely to be warned away from surgery careers due to gender – Physician’s Weekly

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By Vishwadha Chander

(Reuters Health) Punishing hours and concerns about having little time to marry and have children deter both male and female medical students from choosing careers in surgery, but more women say theyve been warned away from the field because of their gender, a survey found.

Researchers sent surveys to roughly 720 students at Harvard Medical School. Among the 261 who responded, similar proportions of both genders intended to become surgeons- roughly one in four men and one in five women.

Roughly similar proportions of men and women about 61% and 65%, respectively said someone had spoken to them to try to dissuade them from a career in surgery, especially if they planned to raise a family.

But 72.7% of women believed the verbal discouragement was related to their gender and their desire for a family, compared to 1.5% of the men, researchers report in Annals of Surgery. And 29% of women reported age-based discouragement, compared to 1.5% of the men.

Despite an equal number of men and women in medical school, fewer than 25% of surgeons are women, study coauthor Dr. Faith Robertson, a neurosurgery resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, told Reuters Health by email. Our study was important to understand why gender ratios change between medical school and practice.

Students generally decide which field to enter during the latter half of medical school, as they complete medical and surgical rotations and speak to peers, mentors and family members, the study authors note.

Discouragement from faculty at the pre-med and student-level definitely has an impact, study coauthor Dr. Susan Pories of Harvard Medical School in Boston told Reuters Health by email. Pories chairs the American College of Surgeons Women in Surgery Committee and is past president of the Association of Women Surgeons.

Dr. Carmen Fong, a colorectal surgeon at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, told Reuters Health that during her surgery rotation in medical school, we had zero female surgeons, and this was at a relatively large hospital in a state capital. There were plenty of women in primary care, but I wanted a female surgeon who had made it, who could tell me that I could balance a life and an academic surgical career.

Dr. Rachel Levine, Associate Vice Chair for Womens Academic Careers in the Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, points out that stereotypes also contribute to gender-based discouragement directed at women.

We think of men as strong, decisive, risk-taking traits more often associated with surgeons. We often think of women as nurturing and helpful, Levine, who was not a part of the study, told Reuters Health. Its sometimes challenging to see a woman as a surgeon because she doesnt fit these typical traits.

The authors say their study at a private, urban institution may not reflect the situation at other universities, but they believe it calls for systemic change, including policies about maternity and paternity leave.

We have to work towards equal pay, leadership roles for women and parental leave policies for men and women, said Pories.

Robertson said the field of surgery has unique demands but also an abundance of unique rewards.

We owe it to medical students to empower them to pursue fields based on their passions, and to patients to have a body of surgeons that reflects population diversity, she said. By discouraging individuals, particularly minorities, from entering the field, we do both a disservice.

The reality is women are successful in all surgical specialties (while still) achieving work-life balance, Pories said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2QBgBMn Annals of Surgery, online October 9, 2019.

(Reporting by Vishwadha Chander)

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Curriculum initiative is rooted in wellness – School of Medicine News – The South End

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Freshmen medical students get a taste of plant-based medicine

Kale. Chickpeas. Tahini. Dates.

Those were just a few of the ingredients in a Nov. 7 class held for the nearly 300 freshmen of the Wayne State University School of Medicine.

The topic was plant-based nutrition, and the new curriculum initiative equal parts cooking demonstrations, hands-on recipe making and clinical testimonials from patients is possibly the first of its kind at any of the nations medical schools.

Most deaths in the United States are preventable and are related to nutrition. Diet is a major cause of death and disability, yet the standard medical education curriculum has little to no emphasis on diet, and almost no medical schools present information on a plant-based diet, said second-year medical student Lakshman Mulpuri, president of the Plant Based Nutrition Group student organization.

The success of PBNGs Plant-Based Curriculum Enhancement will have national implications for the future of clinical care and medical education. Armed with a more comprehensive understanding of plant-based nutrition, these future physicians will be better prepared to combat the devastating effects of chronic disease that millions of Americans face every year, he added.

The half-day event, held throughout Scott Hall and the Mazurek Medical Education Commons, was organized and co-hosted by the student group, and faculty and staff of the medical school.

The event provided an in-depth understanding of the dramatic improvements in health and quality of life every patient has experienced when switching to a plant-based diet, Mulpuri said. We as a population are not doomed to suffer the debilitating and painful consequences of an unhealthy lifestyle. Physicians and patients have the power to change, and the plant-based curriculum enhancement facilitates this transformation.

The curriculum day included panel discussions and an immersive cooking demonstration, providing students with a better understanding of the humanistic value that lifestyle medicine can have, he said.

The curriculum also aligns with the first-year medical students overall educational experience.

The session complements what they are learning in basic sciences and provides additional ways to view how they can keep people healthy, said Nakia Allen, M.D., a pediatrician and director of the Population, Patient, Physician and Professionalism course.

As part of the class, health care professionals and patients from Michigan and Ohio who follow a plant-based diet shared their individual stories of struggle and triumph, from facing chronic disease to earnest discussion about the patient experience.

This was a great event and opportunity for students to see and understand other aspects of wellness can be through diet, said Detroit-based participating physician Gwendolyn Graddy-Dansby, M.D., who specializes in geriatric medicine. The group that I sat with was energized. We talked about how they would apply this to patient care, and discussed the importance of understanding how social determinants of health, such as food islands, impact health. Eastern medicine and Western medicine are partnering more and more, and the exposure to different diets and ways to prepare food for health was good for students.

Six local chefs also participated, providing students with recipes and ingredients that students then made in the cafeteria. Chef Amber Poupore, founder of the Cacao Tree Caf in Royal Oak, has been attending lunch and learn sessions at WSU for four years. She believes it is her lifes mission to educate people about how beneficial a plant-based diet can be, especially as a form of treatment.

Students were more receptive than I anticipated, and there was a lot of positive feedback from them, she said.

Organizers hope to integrate the curriculum enhancement into future medical student class years.

We think it would be particularly helpful teaching students how to counsel patients on improving their nutritional intake, so they can be ready for their clinical years. It is better to have a conversation than avoid it at altogether. We hope to have a nutritional assessment tool and will be providing additional evidence and basic science relevance in the coming weeks, Mulpuri said.

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The Match process is packed with stress. Ob-gyns aim to fix it. – American Medical Association

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Between 2010 and 2019, the average number of applications submitted by medical students who want to match into ob-gyn residency programs has more than doubled, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

An ambitious project proposed by residency programs within the specialty aims to simplify the Match process by reducing applications and creating a more equitable interview invitation system. Spearheaded by the Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics (APGO) and the Council on Resident Education in Obstetrics and Gynecology (CREOG), the program has received a $50,000 planning grant from the AMA Reimagining Residency Initiative.

The APGO programdubbed Right Resident, Right Program, Ready Day Oneis one of three programs to receive planning grants from the AMA. In total, the AMA Reimagining Residency Initiative awarded $15 million in grants to institutions who will aim to transform residency training to meet the workforce needs of Americas current and future health care system.

With the increasing number of applications submitted by each student, the process of securing a residency position has become more stressful. Final-year students spend a significant amount of time and money on the application process.

In the 201819 application cycle, students applying to ob-gyn programs submitted an average of 61.3 applications. Programs have seen a remarkable rise in the volume of applications. That number has grown from an average of 155 applications per program in 2010 to 438 in 2019, according to AAMC data.

That volume has created an environment in which program directors have less bandwidth to consider applicants holistically, defaulting to an evaluation process that overemphasizes test scores and increases stress in applicants.

Theres been a lot of writing in the literature recently about how this process needs to change, said Maya Hammoud, MD, president of APGO and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Michigan Medicine. With support from the AMA, we have started a five-year process by taking small steps to make sure we have all the stakeholders on board. At the same time, we are implementing small changes now to reduce anxiety among students. But this will not be an overnight process. It took many years to get to this point; it will take many years to get out of it.

To get the project off the ground in its early stages, the projects leaders are making sure to get buy-in from key stakeholders such as medical school deans, clerkship directors, residency program directors and representatives from the National Resident Matching Program.

A significant number of ob-gyn residency programs have already adopted suggested interventions that will standardize the residency application process. The three biggest changes are:

APGO has laid out longer-term goals for its efforts to reduce the stress involved with Match. These include development of additional application review metrics to encourage a holistic review of residency applications, an applicant compatibility index to help students with program selection, and an optional early match program within the specialty intended to reduce the number of applications needed for a successful Match.

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The Match process is packed with stress. Ob-gyns aim to fix it. - American Medical Association

Improving the Doctor to Patient Ratio in the African American Community – WVTF

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Of the nearly 45,000 people who hold a Virginia medical license, only about 8% identify as African American. And that percentage is even smaller among younger physicians.

When 22-year-old Jared Bourke walked across the stage and became a graduate of Hampton University in 2018, he already had his eyes set on another graduation: VCU's School of Medicine class of 2022. His goal: Wearing a white coat.

You have to be fairly intelligent and use your brain, but you also have to be a people person and use your character to care for people. So, for me, thats the beauty of medicine and thats why this is the field for me, says Bourke.

The now 24-year-olds aware of all the barriers standing in the way of black medical students. There's the possibility of getting into immense debt, although most medical students expect some debt.

And if finances don't hamper aspiring black medical students, then there's the imposter syndrome that Bourke says many struggle with. "The first day of class was Monday and it was Saturday. I literally broke down in my car, on the way here (VCU). I'm not an emotional person, but I broke down in the car because I was like, yo, I'm really about to do what I've been trying to do since I started school. Like am I really smart enough to be here?"

One of the largest deterring barriers are the lack of African-American physicians serving as mentors.

In 2018, The Virginia Department of Health Professions (VDHP) conducted a "Physician Workforce Survey" where just over 33,000 physicians responded. Just under 1,700 respondents identified as black or African American in a state whose African American population exceeds 1.6 million, according to census data. That number is on the verge of decreasing even more as one-third of all physicians plan to retire before turning 65.

Researchers at VDHP say the overall number of practicing physicians in Virginia may be lower than 33,000 because some of those physicians have the license to practice in Virginia, but may live in another state or work on a military base.

"I grew up in Lawrenceville Virginia on the campus of St. Paul's College and my next door neighbor was a Dr. Clifton Nelson. He was a family doctor and he was the role model that I grew up with and wanted to be like him," Dr. Michele Whitehurst-Cook recounts. She's been practicing family medicine for 37 years.

She didn't tell me how much longer she'd practice medicine, but she did tell me about the watershed moment she had in high school program that provided training at VCU. "Once I spent six weeks here, seeing patients watching doctors do rounds helping nurses out, I realized that I wanted to really be involved in health care wanted to be a physician," says Whitehurst-Cook.

She attributes her medical school success to the African American physicians who nurtured her interest in Richmond and to her childhood neighbor, Dr. Nelson. But having a physician as your neighbor, especially in rural parts of Virginia, is a rarity. It's also a rarity for an African-American patient to have an African-American doctor.

In the Commonwealth, the black doctor to black patient ratio is approximately 1 doctor for every 1,000 patients. Meanwhile, the approximate ratio for white Virginians is 1 doctor for every 400 patients. And if you look at health disparity data it shows that if people are cared for by doctors who look like themselves they have a higher comfort level. They're willing to share more information. They're more trusting of their advice and health outcomes are actually better, says Whitehurst-Cook.

She says increasing the pool size of medical school cohorts and continual investment in pipeline programs will help close that ratio gap.

Policy experts like Lauren Powell, Director of the Office of Health Equity for the Virginia Department of Health, point to similar programs, but say that doesnt address structural issues. If we think about the criteria to get into medical school there historically has been a very heavy emphasis on the MCAT, MCAT scores and GPAs- how well you do doing the impact is really kind of a question of how much resource or how much money you may have to be able to really prepare.

Powell says its her job to make sure folks living in the poorest parts of Virginia have the same chance to achieve health and wellness as affluent Virginians. True health equity, as she puts it.

She believes focusing on population health and health equity, at the structural level, are the best ways to curve health outcomes for Virginians across the state. "Employment, food security, right. Reliable transportation, affordable and safe housing- All of these things combined together to really propel your health or to hinder your health," says Powell.

She admits its hard work in a burnout profession, across ethnicities, but says doctors and policy experts have to take the lead. Second year medical student Jared Bourke wants to be that doctor. A doctor who leads and empathizes with patients on a human and cultural level.

This report, provided byVirginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from theVirginia Education Association.

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Medical Education In The #MeToo Era: ‘No Option But To Stay Silent’? – WBUR

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Harvard Medical School student Chloe Li typically dressed in scrubs or an efficient, professional outfit as she went about learning to care for patients in the intense, year-long clerkship program where I teach.

For her capstone presentation on graduation day, though, she wore a cream-colored wrap-around dress of luscious silk, tasteful jewelry and an up-do hairstyle. She had clearly put a lot of care into these preparations. She was a knock-out.

After the presentations, I gave Chloe a huge hug and congratulated her on her top-notch delivery of Cultural and Language Barriers in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Breast Cancer. And, as the mother of four daughters in their 20s, I spontaneously added: You look absolutely gorgeous tonight!

Then I noticed that two female associate program directors and a male clerkship director were standing nearby. Oy. A bit self-consciously, I inquired, I hope its OK for an attending physician to tell a medical student she looks gorgeous!

One of the associate program directors responded, Are you kidding? All weve been talking about is how beautiful she looks!

Chloe beamed and thanked us for noticing. The lone male just stood there with a pleasantly neutral expression on his face. Everyone had the same thought at the same time --it's true, I checked: "He has no option but to stay silent in this situation."

I could not help but tease him, an old friend who'd been my fellow resident a quarter century ago: What, come on, you dont think Chloe looks beautiful?

He paused, chuckled and protested, There is absolutely no right answer here!

Everyone laughed as we headed off to dinner. But I cant stop thinking about this 30-second intersection in time and space.

It felt liberating to acknowledge the usual eggshells underfoot, and then crush those eggshells, just like a wineglass at a wedding. Our male colleague (father of grown kids and co-founder of a center for mindfulness and compassion) chose to make a joke rather than join the circle of compliments. And he nailed that joke.

The punchline reflected the complex and problematic nature of todays social norms, and we could joke about them because we had known Chloe for a year, and each other for much longer, and had made ourselves vulnerable at many junctures as we struggled and learned together. Our laughter was permeated by a deep sense of trust and respect something our highly relationship-oriented program, the Cambridge Integrated Clerkship, aims to instill as students follow "their" patients under close faculty mentorship over time and across venues of care.

Far Fewer Words To Say They Care

At the same time, we were tacitly acknowledging that in this #MeToo day and age, male faculty members have access to far fewer words to tell female students that they care for them.

In October 2018, The New England Journal of Medicine published an article entitled Mens Fear of Mentoring in the #MeToo Era - Whats at Stake for Academic Medicine? This important piece made visible the reality that men in positions of power are often afraid to engage in mentoring relationships with women, with the unintended consequence of negatively impacting these womens careers.

Our graduation day interchange made me wonder whether there is something at stake beyond academic advancement. What is the cost to female students ability to learn, to their sense of connectedness to the profession, to their psychological well-being, if their faculty mentors are too cautious to fully engage in authentic relationships with them?

Ive heard of male attending physicianswho wont ask a female student a second question on rounds if she gets the first one wrong so as not to be perceived as bullying. A colleague from another institution once told me he didnt offer a female student a ride home in a terrible thunderstorm because he feared the perception of impropriety. I personally know a young pre-med woman whose male mentor will not meet with her unless her peer a young man who tends to dominate the conversation is also present. The mentor does, however, meet with him alone.

Is this what the antithesis of sexual harassment looks like in our world?

Dont get me wrong. This is by no means a call for men in power to be able to freely compliment womens appearance. And we must not stop rooting out abuses of power. The small minority of physicians who sexually harass their junior colleagues have no place in medicine, and important measures are being put in place to allow for confidential reporting and other forms of protection.

But I worry that when there is too much second-guessing, constant concern about accusations of harassment, too many prohibited words or topics that shift and morph constantly, a casualty of these prohibitions may be expressions of deep caring.

Dont be surprised if people dont cry with each other when a patient dies, or if they stop laughing together uncontrollably at silly jokes. Dont be surprised if medical education becomes less fun and meaningful.

My wise colleague Ed Hundert often quotes the old adage, You cant teach a stranger an important truth.I dont know what its like to work in Hollywood or the corporate world, but learning to be a physician requires intimate engagement with human stories and bodies, with suffering and ambiguity, and sometimes even with miracles.

The cultivation of such practical wisdom is the life-long pursuit of the good doctor, and it is hindered by unclear rules and intimidation.

A "Can't Stop Thinking About It" Moment

A few days after graduation, I shared a draft of this piece with Chloe and my colleagues, and asked about their take on the encounter. For each of them, it had been a significant "cant stop thinking about it" moment.

My male colleague thanked me for expressing things he could never say in public. My two female colleagues invited me to go out for a glass of wine to talk about the struggles and joys of a life in medicine. Chloe gave me permission to use her name and responded with a lovely email, drawing particular attention to the trusting, longitudinal relationships we intentionally cultivate in our model of medical education:

In the moment, I wanted so much to tell [the male clerkship director] that I had always known he regarded me with respect and care," she wrote. "The male physicians I look up to as mentors are probably continuously navigating such uncomfortable, unclear situations. I have never felt ill-treated in any way by any of these faculty members, but I feel that even if I had, I would have been able to tell them so, without fearing for my position or grade or safety. The ability to speak up with knowledge that you will be heard and without fear of retribution evens any field."

She added that if, however, she doesn't know a faculty member and has no context for a comment "whether its 'You look nice today!' or 'That was a dumb thing you said on rounds,' I am anxious about the intent behind the comment.

We have a ways to go. Even as a female faculty member, I worried (albeit for a quick second) that my own impulsive outpouring of pride and love on graduation day might have been perceived as inappropriate.

Chloes obvious gratitude made me toss the notion aside, but thats how it should be in medical education and in life, I think noticing our own moments of potential insensitivity, reflecting on them and adjusting if necessary. Apologizing if warranted.

In our institution, we provide forums for both students and faculty to confidentially share the day-to-day ethical challenges they encounter in medical culture: to problem-solve, role play and figure out how to do the right thing in this circumstance, with this individual. The #MeToo era raises similar questions:If what is an act of kindness in one circumstance bestowing a small gift or giving a hug, say can be considered a potentially career-ending interpersonal violation in another, how do we navigate these uncertain waters?

My male colleague was correct, there is no one right answer here. Maybe its not answers we need, but better questions to guide us. Maybe we can consider this one together: If faculty members' fear may be negatively impacting the development of our students, what would bravery look like?

Elizabeth Gaufberg, M.D., MPH, is an associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance, and a senior consultant with the Association of American Medical Colleges.

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Medical Education In The #MeToo Era: 'No Option But To Stay Silent'? - WBUR

Medical College of Georgia

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The impact of the state of Georgia's only public medical school spans from its founding nearly 200 years ago, in 1828, as one of the nation's first medical schools to its current role optimizing health care in Georgia and beyond through education, discovery and service.

The Medical College of Georgia educational experience is anchored by the main campus in Augusta as well as regional clinical campuses for third- and fourth-year students and a second four-year campus in Athens in partnership with the University of Georgia. The states medical school also offers clinical training in more than 200 sites across the state providing students experience in the full spectrum of medicine, from tertiary/quaternary care hospitals to small-town solo practices. MCG and its teaching hospitals provide postgraduate education to nearly 500 residents in 48 different programs.

Our researchers and clinicians focus on illnesses that affect most of Georgia and Americas children and adults, including cardiovascular biology and disease, cancer, neurosciences and behavioral sciences, public and preventive health, regenerative and reparative medicine, personalized medicine and genomics. Our clinical faculty also share their expertise with physicians and patients at about 80 clinics and hospitals statewide.

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Medical College of Georgia

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Join the Celebration Healthcare Simulation Week: September 17-21

As leaders in health care delivery, translational research and education across multiple diverse disciplines, UI Health is committed to training the health care leaders of the future. One element of modern education for practitioners and students today is through medical simulation techniques.Learn More Here

College of Medicine Graduation Shakes the UIC PavilionThe cavernous UIC Pavilion might only have been half-filled with families and friends of the College of Medicines 327 graduates for 2018, but the noise level as they filed across the stage on May 11 probably rivaled that of many a rock concert or hockey game.UIC Chancellor Michael Amiridis, PhD, invited those assembled to show loud enthusiasm for the graduates. This is your opportunity to show our graduates how proud you are, he said. They deserve to have this building shaking as I say, Congratulations to the Class of 2018! Thank you for everything you have done to support our students.

2018 College of Medicine at Chicago Faculty Recognition CeremonyThe 2018 College of Medicine at Chicago Faculty Recognition Ceremony was held on May 9, 2018 to honor this years recipients of the Departmental Faculty of the Year and the Departmental Rising Star awards. There were over 100 in attendance, with 36 faculty receiving honors during this very special event. Click here to see pictures from the event.

2018 College of Medicine Research ForumSAVE THE DATE2018 College of Medicine Research ForumFriday, November 9, 20189:00am 4:00pmStudent Center West828 S. Wolcott

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Peter Secchia reflects on MSU Grand Rapids Research Center, medical school and philanthropy – MLive.com

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GRAND RAPIDS, MI Peter Secchia, a longtime businessman and philanthropist whose generous giving with wife, Joan, has left a lasting imprint along the Medical Mile and across the community, says they will keep making a difference.

On Friday, Nov. 1, Michigan State University announced that the Secchias donated $5 million to the Grand Rapids Research Center. The gift the couples second - completes the $30 million campaign for the $88 million building that opened in September 2017 on the Medical Mile.

Secchia said it was the right thing to do to donate the funds needed to meet the campaign shortfall, so there was no lingering debt as they move to the next endeavor the Doug Meijer Medical Innovation Building. The facility is slated to open beside the research center in 2021.

This is an exciting moment in Grand Rapids history, said Secchia, reflecting on the growth of Michigan States presence in the city with the medical school and the growing research center campus.

I am still raising money and am still going forward to build the final part of the innovation park. Now, we are building the new building for creative and new medicine.

Secchia spoke with excitement Friday about the new types of cancer therapy that researchers will be engaged in at the innovation building. He said Grand Rapids has some of the worlds top researchers already working at MSU on projects in cooperation with Spectrum Health and the Van Andel Institute, their research partners.

In the future, he said plans include a third building on the Grand Rapids Research Center site, located at 15 Michigan St. NE, as well as a parking garage.

Just up the hill sits MSUs $90 million Secchia Center Grand Rapids headquarters for the College of Human Medicine that opened in 2010.

I am proud to have my name on that complex because it is just the beginning of what is turning out to be an unbelievable economic impact on the Medical Mile, said Secchia, the former CEO and chairman of the board at Universal Forest Products, Inc., who served as U.S. Ambassador to Italy from 1989 to 1993.

Twenty years ago, he said, he wanted to get MSUs medical school in Grand Rapids. He said it took him seven years to get the necessary votes and fundraising began soon afterwards for the building.

Secchia said the last gift of his dear friend, the late Richard DeVos, Amway co-founder and philanthropist, included a provision it be named for Secchia because DeVos knew how hard he had worked on the project.

It is crazy when you think about the medical school coming here, he said, noting people said it couldnt be done, but it happened.

Everyone was shocked. They needed to come here because we had people here who wanted to have a medical school and would be proud of it and support it.

The Secchias first gift to the Grand Rapids Research Center was a combined gift of $15 million with Richard and Helen DeVos, which launched the capital campaign for the construction of the building. Prior to that, the couples announced a $20 million combined gift to construct the MSU College of Human Medicine.

Years ago, Secchia said it was DeVos who talked about charitable giving in a speech, after first taking care of your family and employees. He said once he did that, he decided to start helping people and giving to worthy causes and initiatives.

My wife and I have been side by side taking care of all these different people and things, he said.

For example, the Peter and Joan Secchia CarePartners Program, launched in 2015, was established to help families with children who have complex health situations as they navigate their way through the health care system. The program targets families of children with three or more specialists and is offered at no cost.

Secchia said MSU is a land-grant university and they promote taking care of other people and advancing the common good.

"I accepted that as my world and I enjoy it,'' he said.

Peter Secchia is a 1963 graduate of MSUs Eli Broad College of Business, and Joan Secchia is a 1964 graduate of the College of Education.

Prior to Fridays donation, the Secchias donated a grouping of sculptures to MSU as part of their Community Legends program. The sculptures, unveiled Sept. 27, honor three female scientists from Grand Rapids who discovered the pertussis vaccine and are displayed outside the Grand Rapids Research Center building.

Grand Rapids is often highlighted for the consistency and scope of its philanthropic giving.

We learned we had to pay back, Secchia said.

You can wait until you die and pay back when you are in a coffin, but you can be part of it if you do it now. Do it now and create your own legacy and be proud.

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Peter Secchia reflects on MSU Grand Rapids Research Center, medical school and philanthropy - MLive.com

WSU medical school to focus on rural health care, leadership – The Spokesman-Review

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The day before Washington State Universitys inaugural class of medical students arrives on campus, Dean John Tomkowiak sat in his office signing books.

The result was a stack of 60 copies of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, a popular business book destined for the first-year students at the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine who arrive on campus this week.

Its an early gesture designed to introduce them to the colleges unique approach to medicine, which places a premium on developing skills to work in teams to provide care in underserved areas.

Culture is a really important piece of a medical school, particularly when youre taking care of patients, Tomkowiak said. The future of health care, especially in areas with a shortage of providers, is team-based, which means good doctors also need to be good leaders.

Because its a land-grant university, WSU leaders want its medical school to contribute to serving the parts of Washington that most need doctors.

The Washington state Department of Health keeps a list of medically underserved areas, based on the number of providers, the number of elderly residents and infant mortality rates. The map includes all of Pend Oreille, Ferry, Okanogan, Douglas, Columbia, Garfield, Asotin, Franklin and Yakima counties, as well as much of Stevens County.

Its really important we do everything we can to meet that need, Tomkowiak said.

That focus is baked into the college, starting with the entrance requirements for new students and continuing through all four years of medical curriculum.

Prospective students must either live in Washington or be from the Evergreen State. Being born here isnt enough. Applicants need to show three of four possible ties: birth in Washington, a current parent resident, proof of living in state during childhood, or graduation from a Washington high school.

Nine of the incoming students are from rural Washington counties, and together the class hails from 15 counties across the state. Future classes should have a higher proportion of rural students, because the college only had one month to solicit applications after receiving its initial accreditation last fall.

From the first day of class, students will learn about telemedicine and technology in medicine, topics that rural providers need to be comfortable with. Theyll focus on caring for patients in a team setting and encouraging students to question processes and look for ways to improve care.

Part of that means supporting students so they dont burn themselves out. WSU has a full-time financial adviser whos contacted each student individually to talk about debt, budgeting and other financial skills.

The first week of curriculum also talks about provider wellness, and activities like mindfulness and exercise are integrated into the curriculum.

Weve tried to think proactively about what are the things theyre going to be stressed about, Tomkowiak said.

In addition to the regular slate of anatomy and pharmacology classes, students will take four graduate-level leadership classes to hone their ability to work in and lead teams.

All classes are graded pass-fail, rather than on a letter-grade system or using a curve. Thats something about 30 to 40 percent of medical schools now do, Tomkowiak said, and its meant to encourage students to learn together and support each other.

At this point in their training, its not a competition against each other, Tomkowiak said. We want to foster this system of teamwork.

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WSU medical school to focus on rural health care, leadership - The Spokesman-Review

Osmosis is bringing personalized learning to medical school, and beyond – Technical.ly Brooklyn

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Baltimore is well-known for its strengths in healthcare and education technology. In one growing startup that was founded in the city and continues to be based here, both of those areas are represented.

Osmosis applies learning platform tools to education for medical and health professionals.

Our mission is to provide clinicians the best education so they can provide you the best care, saidShiv Gaglani, the companys CEO.

Gaglani and cofounder Ryan Haynes began developing the idea while they were medical students at Johns Hopkins. They found they were both interested in how they were studying, as well as the subject matter. Starting with early work on a tool to help their own classmates, Osmosis developed a personalized learning platform that helps students study for classes and boards. The tools offered allow students can organize their study plans and materials, and there is additional content such as concept cards, flashcards and videos. In addition to providing the content, the system can automatically recommend other course material based on what someone is studying.

For Osmosis, medical education extends beyond school, as well. The startup creates medical education videos that are distributed widely through Wikipedia and YouTube. The video team includes former members of theKhanAcademyMedicine team. They seek to bring an in-depth approach to explaining topics clearly in an animated format. Videos created can also help professionals who need a review, and also educate patients and their families, Gaglani said.

As it grew and developed, Osmosis participated in the Dreamit Health accelerator in Philly, and won theMilken-Penn Graduate School of Education Business Plan Competitionin 2014, our sister site Technical.ly Philly reported. The startup also got support from investors including Medscape founder Peter Frishauf andAmerican Board of Medical Specialties CEOLois Nora.

Gaglani said Osmosis now reaches 300,000 people, and is looking to continue to grow. The companys distributed team has grown to 25, and is looking to grow its Maryland team. Osmosis recently received a $100,000 from TEDCOs Seed Investment Fund to help in that effort.

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Osmosis is bringing personalized learning to medical school, and beyond - Technical.ly Brooklyn

UK universities switching to online lectures and exams – The Guardian

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British universities are ending in-person lectures in an effort to arrest the spread of Covid-19, saying they will switch to remote learning and even online exams for students within weeks.

The London School of Economics, Kings College London, the University of Durham and Manchester Metropolitan University said they would soon end face-to-face teaching in favour of digital delivery, including video lectures and online seminars.

The announcements came as several universities said they planned to curtail public events, with Cambridge Universitys medical school and others looking to pause teaching and clinical exams because of the pressures on the NHS.

The LSE announced the most ambitious plans, saying all undergraduate and postgraduate courses will be delivered online by 23 March for the rest of the academic year, with many of its overseas students wanting to return home immediately.

Kings College London and the LSE also plan to stop in-person examinations, with the LSE saying that all undergraduate and taught postgraduate exams and assessments this summer would be taken online or graded using alternative methods.

LSE has been preparing for a range of scenarios and, given the exceptional circumstances, we believe the best decision is to move to online assessments now, to give you as much notice as possible, the LSEs director, Minouche Shafik, told students.

Whilst we are changing our mode of teaching and learning and taking measures to be responsive to an evolving situation, LSEs campus will remain open. We have had no indication from Public Health England that we should close, and buildings, services and facilities will run as usual.

Staff and students can be on campus and our LSE Library and halls of residence are also open to you.

The decisions to stop students congregating in lecture halls are at odds with the UK governments position that schools and colleges should remain open where possible. The universities stance follows that of US institutions, such as Harvard, which have kept campuses open but ended lectures and seminars in favour of remote learning.

Durham University said all forms of campus teaching, including field trips and one-to-one tutorials, would be replaced with remote learning from next Monday for the final week of term before the Easter holidays.

Please do not turn up to classrooms next week, Claire OMalley, Durhams pro-vice-chancellor, told students in an email.

We know that this may be not be your preferred method of learning and that being in classrooms is an important part of your university experience. However, moving to online learning will help limit exposure to Covid-19 by reducing group activities. This will help all of us as the coronavirus spreads.

Malcolm Press, Manchester Metropolitan Universitys vice-chancellor, warned students that the university is also planning how best to deliver assessments, exams and credits, should we need to change our usual processes for the summer term.

Cambridge University confirmed that its medical school is among those that are planning to halt clinical teaching for its trainee doctors.

In the light of the Covid-19 outbreak and the pressure this is putting on the NHS, the University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine has cancelled its final clinical examinations, subject to approval from the General Medical Council, the university said.

The exams would have involved students interacting with large numbers of NHS patients and they require over 200 examiners, all hospital doctors or GPs, over a two-week period.

The students have already completed their final written examinations and been assessed on clinical competence in previous examinations and on placements in a range of clinical environments.

An email to Cambridge medical students from the school said: We have had to make some extremely difficult decisions based on the principle that students going in and out of clinical environments could be an unnecessary source of virus transmission, they may be putting their patients and themselves at greater risk and there may be too few staff available to deliver formal clinical teaching, either through pressure of work or illness.

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UK universities switching to online lectures and exams - The Guardian

5 ways medical students can assist during the COVID-19 pandemic – American Medical Association

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In-person classes are converting to remote options. Direct patient contact during clinical rotations is suspended. For medical students, the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically altered the course of training.

This has left a group of young trainees with aims on changing the future of the nations health looking for ways they can help change its present, and students are taking the lead to identify appropriate roles.

Its important to note that both student organizers and health systems acknowledge that many of these activities must be entirely voluntary at this point and must not be linked to any form of academic incentive. That being said, heres a look at a few ideas for medical students eager to get involved during the pandemic.

Health systems and public health entities are both looking to reduce the number of unnecessary patients coming into emergency rooms. Hotlines for potential patients are one way that can be done.

Many practices have moved toward telemedicine, meaning not in a setting, but meaning where patients call in and say what their symptoms are and if they should come in or not, said Senthil Rajasekaran, MD, senior associate dean for undergraduate medical education at Wayne State University School of Medicine. By doing that [with adequate supervision] and telling a caller whether or not it looks like a COVID-19 situation, students can help reduce incoming traffic for nurse practitioners and physicians.

Learn how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting medical schools.

Numerous programs through which student volunteers offer childcare for health care workers spending long hours on the wards have come into existence. One such group is MN CovidSitters. Run by medical students at the University of Minnesota Medical Schools, MN CovidSitters says its mission is to help healthcare providers in the Twin Cities/Metro Area who need help managing their household while serving at the frontlines during COVID-19, according to its website.

Learn the four questions medical students are asking about COVID-19.

Most medical schools have suspended any direct patient contact for medical students through April 1. Considering that, organizations like Wayne States student-run free clinic have been put on hold. Still, students are finding ways to assist.

Dr. Rajasekara said students have been offering to refill medications so that patients have a two-month supply to limit the need to return to clinic, while the clinic is operating in a minimal capacity. The also have re-organized the clinics medication room and labeled supplies and medications so they are easier to find.

Christine Petrin, a fourth-year medical student at Tulane University School of Medicine and AMA member, earned a master's in public health prior to entering medical school. That background allowed her to examine data related to the COVID-19 pandemic in New Orleans in a different light.

She found that case number data was largely being reported at the state level. When looking at it on the local level, the situation in New Orleans looks significantly more dire. She compiled per-capita case data in a file and tweeted it out, getting nearly 400 retweets, including from members of national media organizations.

When I started tweeting about what I was collecting it was mostly trying to get national attention on New Orleans, she said. I felt that New Orleans should not be overlooked. Not only because the data looks scary, given the fact that we are a transportation hub, there is a reason to get more attention on New Orleans.

As more COVID-19 drive-thru test centers get up and running, the need for staffing at them will increase.

A third-year medical student at Tulane University School of Medicine, Frances Gill is also active in the New Orleans Medical Reserve Corps, a local nonprofit that facilitates public health volunteering in times of crisis. Through that organization, Gill said several medical students volunteered to work at the COVID-19 test sites.

She will be doing her first shift at a test site this week. She expects to be doing patient in-take rather than conducting the actual tests.

A lot of med students have turned out [at test sites] already, she said. People have been grateful for the opportunity to do something that is continuing their medical education but in a different form.

For medical students looking to make an impact during the pandemic, Gill, an AMA member, offered this thought. Dont hold back, she said. Theres probably efforts that are unfolding in your city or your health system. If there isnt, there are things that med students can easily organize themselves, like providing childcare for health workers or collecting PPE.

Indeed, students are collaborating to share ideas and drive opportunities. One recent example: Audrey Zhang, a senior student at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, tweeted a link to a shared document that lists ideas contributed by students across the U.S. and Canada.

Moving forward, medical school administrators will collaborate to identify which opportunities are both appropriate for students and will contribute to competencies potentially eligible for academic credit. The latest recommendations from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education emphasize the importance of guarding student safety while acknowledging the need for local solutions based on local circumstances. An on-going discussion in the AMAAccelerating Change in Medical Education Community(registration required) has been tackling the challenges of the pandemic for students and faculty members and how some schools are addressing the situation.

The AMA has developed aCOVID-19 resource centeras well as aphysicians guide to COVID-19to give doctors a comprehensive place to find the latest resources and updates from the Centers for Disease Control and PreventionandtheWorld Health Organization. TheAMAs COVID-19 FAQwill help physicians address patient concerns and offers advice on key issues such as how to optimize PPE supply.

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5 ways medical students can assist during the COVID-19 pandemic - American Medical Association

Cockrell School, Dell Med School Team Up to 3D Print Masks for Health Care Workers – UT News | The University of Texas at Austin

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March 24, 2020

Health care workers treating COVID-19 patients are facing a shortage of face masks and other personal protective equipment that could shield them when exposed to the virus. A group of researchers in the Cockrell Schools Texas Inventionworks innovation hub and UTs Dell Medical School are exploring new ways to tackle that problem by 3D printing components of these masks.

Though its still early in the process, the team envisions designing and printing a face mask prototype with a reusable plastic shell, a replaceable filter, straps and a flexible foam or rubber seal. Researchers want to find a method to custom fit masks as needed and make them in a way that the components can be sanitized in a dishwasher or washing machine.

The team is contact with several 3D printing companies in the Austin area to mass-produce their designs, said Scott Evans, director of Texas Inventionworks. Partnering up with one, or several, of these companies would help quickly ramp up production of 3D-printed facemasks once researchers find the right combination of design and materials.

The spread of the virus has spurred a huge spike in demand for these masks, leading to a significant shortage across the globe. The World Health Organization estimated earlier this month that coronavirus response will require upwards of 89 million masks produced each month. To get that done, manufacturers will have to up production by about 40 percent.

Dell Medical School had about 16 days worth of masks on-hand as of late last week, Evans said. Evans and Aaron Miri, chief information officer in the Dell Medical School, have been in contact consistently for the last week as the project started to take shape.

Around the world, companies and institutions are stepping up to make up for the shortage of masks and other protective equipment for medical personnel. An Italian 3D printing company gained global attention after it designed and printed prototypes of the valves that connect respirators to oxygen masks, after hearing about a hospital shortage.

Residents at Massachusetts General Hospital have set up the CoVent-19 Challenge to help find additional solutions. The contest aims to create a new way to quickly design and build respirators, the devices that help infected patients breath, for hospitals.

Formerly known as Longhorn Maker Studios, Texas Inventionworks aims to help engineering students develop, design and build products. The program includes six interconnected initiatives: a curriculum lab for professors; education in design, fabrication and innovation; an innovation accelerator; student access to state-of-the-art facilities and equipment; research partnerships; and engagement with industry.

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Cockrell School, Dell Med School Team Up to 3D Print Masks for Health Care Workers - UT News | The University of Texas at Austin

M4s: Make the most of your post-Match time in medical school – American Medical Association

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For many medical students, Match Day marks the end of a rigorous academic journey before another begins. Often, graduation and some much-needed downtime are in the near future.

While some medical students have already completed their coursework by Match Day, many others have a month or more remaining in medical school.

Holly Caretta-Weyer, MD, is assistant program director at Stanfords emergency medicine residency program. She cautions against falling into senioritis after you Match.

A lot of times people Match and they completely check out, she said. Getting some perspective and respecting the transition is really important. Its a huge change and you may not realize that until you are actually in it.

How can you gain that perspective and prepare for that transition? Dr. Caretta-Weyer offered these tips.

Many medical schools are offering transition to residency programs and boot camps. The transition to residency is also a major focus of theAMA Reimagining Residency initiative, a grant program that aims to transform residency to meet the workforce needs of Americas current and future health care system.

If your medical school does offer a boot camp or specialty-specific preparation courses, Dr. Caretta-Weyer recommends students take advantage of those opportunities. In addition to that, she said students need to think about the things they will be expected to do without supervision early on in residency and hone those skills.

What medical students transitioning to residency should be thinking about is how to recognize sick patients and do basic life-support tasks, she said. What I often will tell students is if you havent done any sort of training in scenarios where there are more potentially unstable patients, you should. Whether thats in a clinical or simulation setting, it will prepare you for the things you are going to do in residency.

Learn more with the AMA about the five skills residency program directors expect on day one.

To get an accurate assessment of your skills, Dr. Caretta-Weyer recommends an outside perspective, ideally from a faculty member with whom you have worked closely.

If you have someone who advised you through the undergraduate medical education process or if you have someone in your specialty who knows your ability and is willing to give you an honest picture of your performance, take advantage of that, said Dr. Caretta-Weyer, who is working on a project to develop a unified system of assessment across emergency medicine residency programs as part of the AMA Reimagining Residency initiative.

The key questions in getting feedback are can you give me an honest 30,000-foot view of my performance? And would you be willing to meet regularly to talk about this? Any reasonable faculty who is interested in the development of students would be really into that.

Read about what one attending physician sees as keys to your success as a resident.

One beneficial area to brush up on, Dr. Caretta-Weyer says, is your teaching skills; residents add the task of teaching medical students to their new responsibilities. That could mean working as teaching assistant or even taking an elective on teaching.

A lot of people are interested in other things, education, administration, quality improvement, social medicine, Dr. Caretta-Weyer said. There are so many things out there that students dont have time to explore so take some of that idle time to expand some of your skill set.

Find out what six top doctors say you need to know during your residency.

Anyone entering residency needs to make sure to come in with a fresh body and mind.

I tell all of our incoming residents to take a vacation and spend time with their family and friends, Dr. Caretta-Weyer said. Medical school is hard. Residency is harder. We like it when residents come in rested. As an intern, you are spending a lot of time off service and doing things outside of your specialty you dont chose. So that recharge is important.

Learn more with the AMA about how medical residents can make the best use of their time off.

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M4s: Make the most of your post-Match time in medical school - American Medical Association

Researchers Predict Potential Spread and Seasonality for COVID-19 Based on Climate Where Virus Appears to Thrive – Newswise

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Newswise Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicines Institute of Human Virology (IHV), which is part of the Global Virus Network (GVN), predict that COVID-19 will follow a seasonal pattern similar to other respiratory viruses like seasonal flu. They base this on weather modeling data in countries where the virus has taken hold and spread within the community.

In a new paper published on the open-data site SSRN, the researchers found that all cities experiencing significant outbreaks of COVID-19 have very similar winter climates with an average temperature of 41 to 52 degrees Fahrenheit, an average humidity level of 47 to 79 percent with a narrow east-west distribution along the same 30-50 N latitude. This includes Wuhan, China, South Korea, Japan, Iran, Northern Italy, Seattle, and Northern California. It could also spell increasing trouble for the Mid-Atlantic States and -- as temperatures rise -- New England.

Based on what we have documented so far, it appears that the virus has a harder time spreading between people in warmer, tropical climates, said study leader Mohammad Sajadi, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at the Insitute of Human Virology at the UMSOM and a member of GVN. That suggests once average temperatures rise above 54 degrees Fahrenheit (12 degrees Celsius) and higher, the virus may be harder to transmit, but this is still a hypothesis that requires more data.

The team based its predictions on weather data from the previous few months as well as typical patterns from last year to hypothesize on community spread within the next few weeks. Using 2019 temperature data for March and April, risk of community spread could be predicted to occur in areas just north of the current areas at risk, said study co-author Augustin Vintzileos, PhD, Assistant Research Scientist in the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. He plans to do further modeling of current weather data to help provide more certainty to the predictions.

Researchers from Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in Shiraz, Iran, and Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, Iran also participated in this study.

I think what is important is this is a testable hypotheses, said study co-author Anthony Amoroso, MD, UMSOM Associate Professor of Medicine and Associate Chief of Infectious Diseases who is also Chief of Clinical Care Programs for IHV. And if it holds true, could be very helpful for health system preparation, surveillance and containment efforts.

In areas where the virus has already spread within the community, like Wuhan, Milan, and Tokyo, temperatures did not dip below the freezing mark, the researchers pointed out. They also based their predictions on a study of the novel coronavirus in the laboratory, which found that a temperature of 39 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity level of 20 to 80 percent is most conducive to the viruss survival.

Through this extensive research, it has been determined that weather modeling could potentially explain the spread of COVID-19, making it possible to predict the regions that are most likely to be at higher risk of significant community spread in the near future, said Robert C. Gallo Co-founder & Director, Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Co-Founder and Chairman of the International Scientific Leadership Board of the GVN. Dr. Gallo is also The Homer & Martha Gudelsky Distinguished Professor in Medicine and Director, Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, a GVN Center of Excellence. In addition to climate variables, there are multiple factors to be considered when dealing with a pandemic, such as human population densities, human factors, viral genetic evolution and pathogenesis. This work illustrates how collaborative research can contribute to understanding, mitigating and preventing infectious threats.

Dr. Gallo is a co-founder of the Global Virus Network, which is a consortium of leading virologists spanning 53 Centers of Excellence and nine Affiliates in 32 countries worldwide, working collaboratively to train the next generation, advance knowledge about how to identify and diagnose pandemic viruses, mitigate and control how such viruses spread and make us sick, as well as develop drugs, vaccines and treatments to combat them. The Network has been meeting regularly to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic sharing their expertise in all viral areas and their research findings.

This study raises some provocative theories that, if correct, could be useful in helping to direct public health strategies, said UMSOM Dean E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, who is also University Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor. Perhaps we should be conducting heightened surveillance and expending more resources into areas that currently have the climate that is conducive to community virus spread.

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About the Global Virus Network (GVN)

The Global Virus Network (GVN) is essential and critical in the preparedness, defense and first research response to emerging, exiting and unidentified viruses that pose a clear and present threat to public health, working in close coordination with established national and international institutions. It is a coalition comprised of eminent human and animal virologists from 53 Centers of Excellence and nine Affiliates in 32 countries worldwide, working collaboratively to train the next generation, advance knowledge about how to identify and diagnose pandemic viruses, mitigate and control how such viruses spread and make us sick, as well as develop drugs, vaccines and treatments to combat them. No single institution in the world has expertise in all viral areas other than the GVN, which brings together the finest medical virologists to leverage their individual expertise and coalesce global teams of specialists on the scientific challenges, issues and problems posed by pandemic viruses. The GVN is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. For more information, please visit http://www.gvn.org. Follow us on Twitter @GlobalVirusNews

About the Institute of Human Virology

Formed in 1996 as a partnership between the State of Maryland, the City of Baltimore, the University System of Maryland and the University of Maryland Medical System, IHV is an institute of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and is home to some of the most globally-recognized and world-renowned experts in all of virology. The IHV combines the disciplines of basic research, epidemiology and clinical research in a concerted effort to speed the discovery of diagnostics and therapeutics for a wide variety of chronic and deadly viral and immune disorders - most notably, HIV the virus that causes AIDS. For more information, http://www.ihv.org and follow us on Twitter @IHVmaryland.

About the University of Maryland School of Medicine

Now in its third century, the University of Maryland School of Medicine was chartered in 1807 as the first public medical school in the United States.It continues today as one of the fastest growing, top-tier biomedical research enterprises in the world -- with 45 academic departments, centers, institutes, and programs; and a faculty of more than 3,000 physicians, scientists, and allied health professionals, including members of the National Academy of Medicineand the National Academy of Sciences, and a distinguished two-time winner of the Albert E. Lasker Award in Medical Research. With an operating budget of more than $1.2 billion, the School of Medicine works closely in partnership with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Medical System to provide research-intensive, academic and clinically based care for nearly 2 million patients each year. The School of Medicine has more than $540 million in extramural funding, with most of its academic departments highly ranked among all medical schools in the nation in research funding. As one of the seven professional schools that make up the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus, the School of Medicine has a total population of nearly 9,000 faculty and staff, including 2,500 student trainees, residents, and fellows. The combined School of Medicine and Medical System (University of Maryland Medicine) has an annual budget of nearly $6 billion and an economic impact more than $15 billion on the state and local community. The School of Medicine faculty, which ranks as the 8thhighest among public medical schools in research productivity, is an innovator in translational medicine, with 600 active patents and 24 start-up companies. The School of Medicine works locally, nationally, and globally, with research and treatment facilities in 36 countries around the world. Visitmedschool.umaryland.edu

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Researchers Predict Potential Spread and Seasonality for COVID-19 Based on Climate Where Virus Appears to Thrive - Newswise