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University of Washington School of Medicine
Online News
Vol. 11, No. 27
July 13, 2007
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MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN: Graduate medical education programs make up an important part of UW Medicine organization
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This week’s news:
* John R. Hogness, former UW president and medical school dean, dies at 85
* Maynard Olson, one of the architects of the Human Genome Project, receives 2007 Gruber Prize for Genetics
* David Losh to serve as acting chair of the Department of Family Medicine, effective Aug. 1
* UW Teaching Scholars Program, designed for health professionals interested in becoming academic leaders, extends application deadline to July 25
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MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN
Dear Colleagues:
Our graduate medical education (GME) programs form an integral part of our education, research, and clinical mission. UW Medicine is committed to enhancing the academic excellence of these programs, and I would like to bring you up to date on the status of our GME programs.
UW Medicine GME programs
The School of Medicine sponsors 81 residencies and fellowships. This year, 347 new residents and fellows began training at the UW. The UW-sponsored GME programs include 1,070 trainees.
Major training sites for the UW programs are UW Medical Center, Harborview Medical Center, VA Puget Sound Health Care System, Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, and 18 participating institutions in the Seattle area, with additional training in many local and regional clinics and ambulatory sites.
Another 16 UW-affiliated programs form the Family Medicine Residency Network. These programs train 360 residents across the five-state WWAMI region. An internal-medicine residency and two transitional residencies in Spokane, with 40 residents, are also UW-affiliated programs.
UW programs achieved excellent results in the annual residency Match compared to national trends. For example, the UW family medicine program matched 100 percent of its positions, compared to only 88 percent filling nationally. Likewise, the UW internal medicine program filled all 28 of its categorical (three-year) positions with graduates from American allopathic schools, compared to only 56 percent nationally.
E-learning: a new initiative
In winter 2007, the Coordinated Quality Improvement Plan Committee, a joint effort of UWMC and Harborview-based clinicians, nursing staff, and risk management leaders, presented a proposal to develop a Web-based learning system in clinical improvement and safety for residents and fellows. Hospital leadership at UWMC and Harborview responded with funding commitments that allowed development of this e-learning system.
A dedicated Web server is near completion. Five core clinical competency topics -- Infection Control, Patient Safety, Patient Safety Net, Deep Vein Thrombosis Management, and Central Line Placement -- are being developed, with an anticipated roll-out in January 2008. Additional topics are planned for next year.
Current and incoming residents will be required to complete the modules, and within the next year, faculty participation will begin. The program will provide user-friendly, up-to-date instruction to all clinicians in UW Medicine, with the goal of improving patient care and satisfaction throughout our system.
New regional psychiatry residency program begins
On July 1, 2007, the Idaho Psychiatry Residency was established in Boise in conjunction with the School of Medicine, the Puget Sound and Boise VA, and St. Alphonse and St. Luke Medical Centers. This program is a separate track of the UW psychiatry residency and, when fully operational, will include three residents per year in the four-year residency. Residents will spend their first two years in Seattle with the UW psychiatry program, and then move to Boise for their final two years. A similar program in Spokane has successfully increased behavioral and psychiatric care in eastern Washington. The Boise program is expected to help address the behavioral health needs of the large numbers of returning national guardsmen in Idaho over the course of the Iraq War.
Proposed federal rule threatens GME funding
On May 23, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) proposed a rule that would eliminate nearly two billion dollars in federal matching payments for graduate medical education. This proposed rule presents a threat to the quality of GME. We have made our concerns known through multiple venues, including letters from our hospital administrators, working with the Department of Social and Health Services, and joining with others in the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Group on Residency Affairs in issuing a statement. Additional information concerning the proposed rule is available at the AAMC website: http://www.aamc.org/advocacy/library/teachhosp/corres/2007/062207.pdf. Please consider writing a letter to CMS about the proposed rule.
I would like to thank John Coombs, vice dean for graduate medical education, and Joe York, associate dean for graduate medical education, for their important work in advancing our training programs. These outstanding programs are vital to UW Medicine and to the future of the medical profession.
Sincerely,
Paul G. Ramsey, M.D.
CEO, UW Medicine
Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs and
Dean of the School of Medicine
University of Washington
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FORMER UW PRESIDENT AND MEDICAL SCHOOL DEAN JOHN HOGNESS DIES AT 85
John R. Hogness, former president of the University of Washington in Seattle and former dean of the UW School of Medicine, died in the University House at Wallingford UW retirement center late Monday evening, July 2. He was 85. The cause of death was heart and kidney failure.
A memorial service is planned for 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday, July 22, in the John R. Hogness Auditorium at the University of Washington Health Sciences Center in Seattle. The memorial service is open to all UW School of Medicine faculty, staff, and students. The family suggests that contributions in Hogness' memory may be made to the contributor's favorite charity.
Hogness was UW medical school dean from 1964 to 1969, executive UW vice president and vice president of the UW Health Sciences from 1969 to 1971 and UW president from 1974 to 1979, when he became president of the national Association of Academic Health Centers.
He had served as the first president of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences from 1971 to 1974, and helped build the institute from scratch as an unbiased examiner of America's health care problems. He became known for pulling together divergent viewpoints and for his insightful and innovative contributions to U.S. health policy. He was a widely published commentator on the U.S. health-care system, and on challenges facing medical schools, health professional schools, and teaching hospitals. He was particularly interested in advancing the roles of nurses and physician assistants in patient care, and in the economics of health care.
When he left the UW presidency, the Board of Regents established in his honor an annual symposium, featuring nationally renowned speakers on topical issues affecting health care, including the social and ethical aspects of medicine.
With the physical stature of a football player, standing at 6 feet 4 inches, Hogness was personable, easygoing, and known for his sense of humor and informal manner. He tried to understand, first-hand if possible, what situations were like from another person's point of view. In the late 1960s, for example, when rural towns faced a physician shortage, Hogness, then dean of medicine, went to Omak, Wash., to fill in for two weeks for a general practitioner to experience the day-to-day challenges of a country doctor.
Hogness helped bring together the academic university and community health-professionals through his diplomacy in town-gown relations. As president of the UW, Hogness was open to student feedback, and encouraged student evaluation of courses.
Hogness was born June 27, 1922, in Oakland, Calif. He attended Haverford College and the University of Chicago. Hogness and his first wife, Katharine, had five children. Katharine died in 2004. He is survived by his three daughters Karen Hogness of Charlemont, Mass.; Suze Rutherford; and Jody Hazen of Snoqualmie, Wash., two sons, Rusten of Santa Cruz, Calif., and David, a physician in the United Arab Emirates, his second wife Margaret, and his four stepchildren, Tyler, Peg, Terry, and Tom.
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MAYNARD OLSON RECEIVES 2007 GRUBER PRIZE FOR GENETICS
Maynard Olson, UW professor of genome sciences and of medicine in the Division of Medical Genetics, has received the 2007 Gruber Prize for Genetics. Olson, one of the main architects of the Human Genome Project, created a method to break the yeast genome into manageable pieces for analysis. His pioneering work paved the way for analysis of the entire human genome.
UW faculty members have now been recognized with the Gruber Prize for Genetics in three of the past four years. Robert Waterston, professor and chair of genome sciences, received the prize in 2005, and Mary-Claire King, the American Cancer Society professor of genome sciences and of medicine, received it in 2004.
The fledgling award was created several years ago by the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, a philanthropic group headquartered in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The foundation promotes social justice, educational excellence, and scientific achievement. It offers annual prizes in genetics, neuroscience, cosmology, women's rights, and justice; each includes an unrestricted cash award of $500,000. The group has also partnered with other scientific organizations to offer fellowships for outstanding young scientists in genetics, neuroscience, and cosmology.
Olson received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, and his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from Stanford. He served on the faculty at Dartmouth College for five years before coming to the UW as a visiting scholar and research associate, from 1974 to 1979, working with Benjamin Hall in what was then the Department of Genetics. He joined the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, and later became an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Olson returned to the UW in 1992, joining the Department of Molecular Biotechnology, the forerunner of today's Department of Genome Sciences.
Olson's current work is focused on evolution at the genome level. One of his projects involves studying the evolution of pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that commonly infects cystic fibrosis patients. Olson and his colleagues are examining how the pseudomonas genome evolves over many years in the lungs of a cystic fibrosis patient. The work could shed light on the natural process of genome evolution, and could help scientists better understand how to treat chronic pseudomonas infections in people with cystic fibrosis.
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DAVID LOSH TO BECOME ACTING CHAIR OF FAMILY MEDICINE
David Losh, UW professor of family medicine, will become acting chair of the Department of Family Medicine, effective Aug. 1. He succeeds Alfred Berg in the position. The department is conducting a nationwide search for a permanent chair.
Losh has been involved in family medicine education for nearly 30 years, serving as a preceptor at the University of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Academy of Family Practice in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He served on the faculty of the Medical College of Ohio and led the Toledo Hospital Family Practice Residency Program before joining the UW in 1992. He has previously served as director of the UW Family Medicine Residency Program, and is a member of the Wind River College Faculty in the UW medical school's Colleges program.
Losh received his bachelor's degree from Ottawa University in Ottawa, Kan., and his medical degree from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Kansas City, Kan. He completed his family practice residency at Mercy and St. Luke's Hospitals in Davenport, Iowa, through the University of Iowa.
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TEACHING SCHOLARS PROGRAM ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS UNTIL JULY 25
The UW's Teaching Scholars Program has extended its application deadline to July 25. The one-year certificate program is designed to help educators in the health professions who have a passion for teaching and a desire to become academic leaders.
The program is run by the Department of Medical Education and Biomedical Informatics in the UW School of Medicine. Scholars accepted to the program devote one morning a week to scholarly discussion and reflection on academic leadership, educational scholarship, and practice. They work with faculty mentors to plan and conduct seminars on topics of interest and to complete a scholarly project in education suitable for publication.
To participate in the program, faculty need to obtain financial support from their department chair and approved release time on Tuesday mornings for seminars and research projects. Scholars nominated by their department chairs will be chosen to start the program in September of 2007. A participant’s department chair must provide a commitment of support, Tuesday morning release time, approval for a two-day workshop, a program fee of $3,650, and travel funds for one national meeting.
For more information or to apply to the program, visit:
http://www.mebi.washington.edu/scholars.html
Applicants should also send a curriculum vitae and a letter of support from the department chair to Lynne Robins, Teaching Scholars Program Director, Department of Medical Education and Biomedical Informatics, UW HSC, Box 357240.
Further information is also available from Rachael Hogan, program coordinator, at 206-616-9875, rhogan@u.washington.edu or Lynne Robins, program director, at 206-616-9874, lynner@u.washington.edu
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Justin Reedy, editor:
206-685-0382, jreedy@u.washington.edu
Online News is copyright 2007. All rights, including electronic
redistribution, are reserved.
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