Inside Nevada Medicine | An Update from Dean John A. McDonald, University of Nevada School of Medicine

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march 2008
Dean's Comments Match Day. Good luck to the class of 2008! Every graduating physician in Nevada must complete a minimum of three years or more of additional specialized training in order to obtain a license to practice medicine. This decision is made during the third and early in the fourth year of medical school. During the third year every UNSoM student has required clinical rotations in internal medicine, family and community medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry, and surgery. In the fourth year, our students typically spend time in one or more elective rotations in one or more specialties or subspecialties to assess their fit for a particular discipline. On March 20, our students will learn where they will spend the next three to five (or more) years. The decision about which residency to pursue and where it is located has a profound impact on physician availability to a community, the quality of patient care, and medical student education. Resident physicians (so called because they used to live in hospital- provided housing) must complete a highly structured curriculum with dedicated physician faculty that prepares them for independent practice in a setting of increasing patient care responsibility. Residents also provide a majority of teaching for medical students, and enhance patient care. Beyond these direct benefits to patient care and education, residents represent the most direct source of physician workforce in a community. Completing residency is a far more powerful predictor of remaining to practice in a region than completing medical school there. This underscores how critical it is for us to add additional residency training programs. Now, many of our graduating students must leave the state in order to pursue residency training in programs we do not offer. Even though our state medical school was founded during the same period as those in surrounding states (e.g. Utah, Arizona, UC Irvine, and New Mexico) these schools offer a far greater number of residency and fellowship training programs than Nevada (Figure 1). According to an AAMC study, Nevada ranks third in the country for retention of physicians completing residency training. Seven of 10 physicians completing training here stay here to practice medicine. To accomplish this, we must build first-rate residency programs. Our students are highly competitive, typically gaining their first or second choice of residency training programs. This requires high quality, dedicated teaching physicians who have protected time to prepare teaching material, remain current, and evaluate residents. We currently have a very small faculty in comparison to the numbers of students and residents we train. Thus, we have focused on adding teaching clinical faculty as a first step in growing these much needed residency and fellowship training programs. This requires a considerable investment, as our physician faculty generates most of their own salaries through clinical practice and this takes a year or two to build up adequate patient volume. We have invested in adding 42 new clinical faculty over the past 18 months to start our residency expansion. --John A. McDonald, M.D., Ph.D. Vice President Health Sciences and Dean University of Nevada School of Medicine Medical Education Two students place in early match programs Two graduating medical students from the University of Nevada School of Medicine placed in very competitive early match programs. Aicha Hull participated in the Military Match and will complete her residency in emergency medicine at Madigan Army Hospital in Tacoma, Washington. Carrie Stair will do her residency in neurosurgery at the University of Utah. Read more 25th annual Bierkamper winners announced Two University of Nevada School of Medicine students were recognized recently for excellence in research at the 25th Annual George G. Bierkamper Student Research Convocation. This year’s graduate student Bierkamper award went to David Tamang for his research on “T Cells Shoot From the Waist: Low Dose IL-15 Induces Snap Arming of CD44 (low) T Lymphocytes in the Absence of Antigen.” Tamang, a fifth-year graduate student, worked with microbiology and immunology professor Dorothy Hudig, Ph.D. Kevin Gamett received the medical student Bierkamper award for his presentation entitled, “The Effect of Health Risk Appraisals on Patient Outcomes in a Weight Management Clinic.” Gamett, a second-year medical student, worked with internal medicine professor Jessica Krenkel, Ph.D. Read more Fundraiser planned for students' clinical trip to Nicaragua Faculty, students and staff are invited to a benefit and silent auction to help subsidize the cost of 10 first-year medical students working in a free medical clinic in rural Nicaragua this spring. The fundraising benefit will be held Saturday, April 12 starting at 5:30 p.m. in the Pennington building in Reno. Silent auction features items from local businesses, restaurants, and vacation trips. Hors d’oeuvres, cocktails, and entertainment will be provided. Cost is $25 per person, $10 for students and children 12 & under. Tickets will be sold at the door and credit cards will be accepted. Cocktail attire is requested. Proceeds from this event will benefit the student trip to Siuna, Nicaragua through the non-profit organization Bridges to Community to service underprivileged members of that community. Each student will purchase his or her own airfare to Nicaragua, but needs to come up with $1,500 to cover the cost of medical supplies, facilities, translators, accompanying physicians and accommodations. This trip’s contact person is Alyce Sutko and her number is 702-497-9441. An account has been set up through the university. Checks can be made out to the UNR Foundation with UNSOM Student Gift Account as the designee and mailed to: Stefanie Scoppettone, Development Director, Pennington Medical Education Building, University of Nevada School of Medicine, Reno, NV 89557. Monetary donations as well as donations of medical supplies are welcome. Collaboration results in published article Fourth-year student Kate Young, Chad Newell, M.D., a pediatric resident, and Jack Lazerson, M.D., professor and pediatric residency program director, recently published an article, "An Unusual Case of Urinary Symptoms" in the journal Pediatrics and Child Health of the Canadian Pediatric Society. Students present at West Pharmacology Society meeting Faculty and students from the School’s pharmacology department recently attended the 51st annual meeting of the Western Pharmacology Society in Hawaii. Doctorate students Sharif Ramjahn and Jennifer Tichenor presented posters at this meeting and received the first and third place awards, respectively, for the United States. Ramjahn studies breast cancer and tubulogenesis while Tichenor studies stretch activated potassium channels in human uterine tissue. Faculty Coates addresses ACOS conference Jay Coates, D.O. recently spoke at the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons’ (ACOS) mid-winter in-depth review conference. He is also program chair for the ACOS fall meeting. Coates is vice chair of the trauma/critical care department at University Medical Center in Las Vegas and program director of the trauma/critical care fellowship program at the School of Medicine. Pediatric, surgical faculty present at conference David Gremse, M.D., professor and chair of the Las Vegas pediatrics department, recently announced that numerous faculty members from his department made presentations at the annual meeting of the Western Society for Pediatric Research conference in Carmel, Calif. earlier this year. William A. Zamboni, M.D., professor and chair of the department of surgery, said that faculty members from his department also made presentations at the annual Western Societies Meeting in Carmel on subjects ranging from studies on the effects of hyperbaric oxygen on ischemia-reperfusion injury to necrosis and apoptosis in ischemia and reperfusion. Goodman publishes paper on need for fellowship training Phil Goodman, M.D., Department of Internal Medicine in Reno, has a research paper that just came out in the current issue of The Journal of Hospital Medicine, the premier publication in the emerging field of hospital medicine as a specialty. The paper is titled “Clinical hospital medicine fellowships: perspectives of employers, hospitalists, and medicine residents.” In the paper, Goodman and co-author Andrius Januska state that because present demand outstrips the supply of adult and pediatric hospitalists, graduating residents now enter the field without clinical fellowship training offered in other specialties. “As we at the School of Medicine considered implementing such a fellowship, we first wanted to determine whether residents would be willing to defer full-time employment for a year of fellowship training (and whether employers would appreciate and reward such fellowship-trained hospitalists),” Goodman said. “Using a series of three linked national web-based surveys, we discovered an unmet demand for such clinical hospital medicine fellowships and we hope to implement such a fellowship in the near future.” Zamboni to serve as ASRM president in 2009 William A. Zamboni, M.D., professor and chair of the surgery department, was voted president-elect of the American Society of Reconstructive Microsurgery at its recent annual meeting. This is one of the largest and most prestigious plastic surgery societies in the world. He will serve as president in 2009. Bar-on to co-moderate platform session Miriam Baron-on, M.D., School of Medicine pediatrics professor and associate dean for graduate medical education, has been invited to co-moderate a platform session this May at the 2008 PAS and Asian Society for Pediatric Research Joint Meeting in Honolulu. Fiore gives lecture at CME conference David Fiore, M.D. gave two lectures at the Nevada Academy of Family Physician’s Winter CME conference at South Lake Tahoe earlier this year. Lecture topics included a discussion of the role of apologies in medical practice and a discussion of evidence-based medicine and “point of care” tools that allow physicians to quickly access current medical knowledge and recommendations. Fiore also participated in a panel discussion at last fall’s AAMC conference in Washington, D.C. on “Honor Codes in Medical Schools: Philosophy, Implementation, and Outcomes.” He is an associate professor, associate residency director, Director of Sports Medicine and Director of Community Medicine in the family medicine department at the School of Medicine in Reno. Professor presents at international HHT conference Daniel Goodenberger, M.D., professor and Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine in Las Vegas, presented at the International HHT Conference in Capri, Italy last spring. His topics included: “Increased nose bleeding heralds high output cardiac failure in hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia – results of a case control study;” “Echo doppler compared to right heart catheterization for diagnosis of high output heart failure in hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia;” and “Schizencephaly and hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia – a previously unrecognized association?” He was also a visiting professor at Washington University in St. Louis where he gave grand rounds speaking on "The Tyranny of Numbers - Educational Expansion and the Effects on Departments of Medicine." Spogen makes national, state presentations Daniel Spogen, M.D., Chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine in Reno, made two national presentations recently including a poster presentation on “Involving Family Medicine Faculty in Medical School Curriculum to Foster Care of the Indigent Patient” at the Society of Teachers in Family Medicine meeting in Portland, Oregon and a discussion on “Structuring Teaching in the Medical School to Foster Care of the Indigent Patient” at the Association of Departments of Family Medicine chairs meeting in San Diego. He also gave an exercise stress testing workshop at the Nevada Academy of Family Physicians’ state meeting in Lake Tahoe earlier this year. Surgery professors publish in two journals William A. Zamboni, M.D., Chair of the Department of Surgery, and Keyvan Khiabani, M.D.C.M., head of the hand and microsurgery section, co-authored an article entitled “Reperfusion induced Neutrophil CD18 Polarization: Effect of Hyperbaric Oxygen” in the Journal of Surgical Research. Zamboni also published “A New Technique of Internal Suture Mastopexy for mild to moderate breast ptosis” in the Canadian Journal of Plastic Surgery. Pixley published in rheumatology journal John Pixley, M.D., with the Department of Internal Medicine in Reno and the Veterans’ Administration, had his article “Membranous glomerulopathy associated with rheumatoid arthritis may respond to rituximab” accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Rheumatology. Epter receives AAEM award Mike Epter, D.O., an assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine in Las Vegas, accepted the American Academy of Emergency Medicine's Young Educator Award last month at its annual meeting awards ceremony. He accepted the award with his wife and nine emergency medicine residents in attendance. New hires and promotions New staff members at University Health System in Reno University Health System recently announced the following hires for departmental positions in Reno: Joseph Mavis, senior accountant in accounting; Sarita Dewan, front office specialist in internal medicine; Josh Cardinal and Wendy Santamaria, medical records specialists in internal medicine; Jennifer Zarco, student worker in billing; Misty Crawford, patient care coordinator in internal medicine; and Graciela Pedroza, medical assistant in internal medicine. Zielinski hired as environmental health and safety expert Anne Marie Zielinski has filled a new position to provide environmental health and safety support to UNR employees in the Las Vegas area. Through a memorandum of understanding, this new position is shared equally between UNR and the Desert Research Institute. She will provide assistance with training, risk assessment, emergency planning and other common EH&S issues. She can be reached via phone at (702)862-5358 or email. School Notes Match Day is March 20 The Class of 2008 will learn the results of the National Resident Matching Program on March 20 at 9 a.m. at separate celebrations on the Reno and Las Vegas campuses. In Las Vegas, students will find out where they will do their residencies at the 2040 building on the sixth floor, rooms E and F, while in Reno the celebration will be in the Pennington foyer. Hooding ceremony planned for May 16 Mark your calendar now for this year’s Academic Hooding Ceremony, planned for May 16 at 1 p.m. at Lawlor Events Center. A reception will follow. This final ceremony marks a time to recognize the accomplishments of fourth-year students and to acknowledge the part that faculty have played in their success. Faculty members are especially encouraged to attend and support the future physicians they have helped educate. Call for entries to annual talent show The School of Medicine Student Wellness Committee is planning the Annual School of Medicine Talent Show and would love to increase faculty and staff participation. Faculty and staff talent is needed for the event that will be held in Manville Auditorium on Wednesday, March 19 from noon to 1:30 p.m. Please contact Morgan Richards, Tina Kwan or Kelsey Worthington to let them know what you plan to showcase and they will add you to the program.	In This Edition Dean's Comments Medical Education Two student place in early match programs 25th annual Bierkamper winners announced Fundraiser planned for students' clinical trip to Nicaragua Collaboration results in published article Students present at West Pharmacology Society meeting Faculty Coates addresses ACOS conference Pediatric, surgical faculty present at conference Goodman publishes paper on need for fellowship training Zamboni to serve as ASRM president in 2009 Bar-on to co-moderate platform session Fiore gives lecture at CME conference Professor presents at international HHT conference Spogen makes national, state presentations Surgery professors publish in two journals Pixley published in rheumatology journal Epter receives AAEM award New hires, promotions New staff members at University Health System in Reno Zielinski hired as environmental health and safety expert School Notes Match Day is March 20 Hooding ceremony planned for May 16 Call for entries to annual talent show
Inside Nevada Medicine is a service of the Health Science Communications Office, University of Nevada School of Medicine and is published monthly. Faculty, staff, residents and students are encouraged to submit items of School-wide interest to Editor Anne McMillin for publication. Deadline is the 20th of the month prior to publication. Copyright 2008 University of Nevada School of Medicine.