OUR HISTORY.......OUR MISSION
When the University of Nevada School of Medicine was chartered in 1969, its mission was training and providing primary care doctors for Nevada’s rural communities. While the school has met its original charge, its mission has expanded over the past 19 years to keep pace with the demands of the nation’s fastest growing state. In expanding its mission, the school has maintained a tradition of excellence and innovation in education despite the challenge of meeting the demands of two population centers—Las Vegas and Reno—more than 400 miles apart. In spite of an increasingly difficult healthcare economy, the school has remained a leader in and contributed to the acceleration of biomedical knowledge and technology.
While the school’s mission has expanded, it has also remained true to its original charter to provide statewide medical education and patient care. The school’s main campus is in Reno and exists as part of the University of Nevada, Reno. There, undergraduate medical education is concentrated in classrooms and labs. The curriculum emphasizes biomedical and behavioral sciences which are basic to medicine. The school’s comprehensive clinical campus is in Las Vegas. Third-year students are also offered the opportunity to train at the school’s clinical campus in Elko, where they are exposed to providing healthcare in rural communities.
As the state’s only public medical school, the University of Nevada School of Medicine encompasses 16 clinical medical education departments, including Family Medicine, Pediatrics, Obstetrics/Gynecology, Internal Medicine, Surgery, and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, as well as five nationally-recognized departments within basic science including microbiology and biomedical engineering. As the largest multi-specialty healthcare focus within the state, the School of Medicine employs more than 185 doctors who both teach and practice medicine throughout Nevada. The school’s statewide faculty physician practice group has a combined more than 30 different medical specialties with seven physician practice offices located in the Reno-Sparks area and five physician offices located in Las Vegas.
The University of Nevada School of Medicine utilizes a best-practices approach to medicine and is committed to addressing the health needs of Nevada now and in the future.
The Sol and Ella Savitt Medical Library
Another important resource for all Nevadans is the Savitt Medical Library. It houses more that 60,000 volumes of books and journals, including a large consumer health collection. From the library’s web site – www.medicine.nevada.edu/medlib - electronic access is provided, for our students, faculty and staff, to many health sciences databases, textbooks, and more than 3,500 fulltext medical journals. The library serves as the Medical Resource Library of Nevada, so designated by the National Library of Medicine.
