Category Archives: Medical School

by MARK WIGGINS / KVUE News and photojournalist SCOTT MCKENNEY

kvue.com

Posted on September 24, 2012 at 6:25 PM

Updated yesterday at 6:41 PM

AUSTIN -- Posters popping up across town urge passers-by to "stop the bleeding." They are signs that opposition to a new University of Texas medical school and teaching hospital in Austin is organizing.

"We say that the way to keep Austin healthy is to 'stop the bleeding,'" said Don Zimmerman, founder and treasurer of the Travis County Taxpayers Union, a political action committee (PAC) dedicated to opposing a tax increase to fund the project. The committee is a counterpart to Keep Austin Healthy, a PAC created by supporters of the project.

Zimmerman argues a five-cent increase proposed by Central Health, equivalent to about $100 a year on a $200,000 home, is too much to ask of a community that has seen property taxes steadily rise.

"We're dying a death by a thousand cuts," said Zimmerman. "Each one of these taxes and each one of the tax increases by itself doesn't drive you out of your home, but when you add up all the property taxes and all the increases, people are literally being taxed out of their homes."

Along with investment from the University of Texas and Seton Healthcare Family, State Senator Kirk Watson (D-Austin) says the $35 million contributed by Austinites through a tax increase would be matched by more than $86 million in federal Medicaid funds.

Watson contracted TXP, Inc., an Austin-based consulting firm specializing in economic analysis, to study the impact of the project. Speaking with KVUE in August, president and founder Jon Hockenyos provided a detailed breakdown of economic data predicting a gain of 15,000 jobs and roughly $2 billion in economic activity as a result of the project.

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Opponents raise questions over proposed UT medical school

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On Friday the Austin-Travis County EMS union held a press conference to endorse the health district's Proposition 1State Senator Kirk Watsons plan to bring a medical to Austin and expanding care to more residents.

"A lot of people in our community that don't currently have a medical home will have a medical home in community clinics, will have better wellness programs, Sen. Watson said.

Meanwhile, members of the Travis County Taxpayers Union are protesting the property tax hike that the proposition requires. For a $200,000 home, the tax would come out to an additional $100 per year.

"That number was not chosen on what Austinites can afford, Laura Pressley, Proposition 1 opponent, said.

For every dollar local taxpayers spend on the project, the federal government will put in $1.50. Supporters call that a boon, but opponents call it an empty promise.

"The problem is that is coming from a bankrupt government. I promise you, cuts are coming, opponent Roger Fall said. Where are we going to fill that dollar-fifty gap? Where's that money coming from?"

Those opposed to the tax hike say it's simply too much for Austin families to shoulder. Energy and water rates are already going up, and other bond item will be on the November ballot.

Meanwhile, supporters say bringing a medical school to Austin will generate $2 billion dollars for the economy each year.

Go here to read the rest:
Opposing groups debate medical school proposition

By Hadas Kuznits

CAMDEN, N. J. (CBS) Medical students in Camden underwent a special ceremony on Friday.

Dr. Paul Katz, dean of the Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, says its a very special moment when a medical student puts on their white coat for the first time. Thats why a special ceremony was held for the incoming class.

The white coat is very symbolic of being a physician and this is the day where we give them the white coat but more than that, really welcome them to the profession, Dr. Katz explains.

It was also a special moment for the school, with this being the inaugural class.

Weve told this class that there will only be one charter class in the history of this medical school and it is them, Dr. Katz says.

He says many people have been waiting a long time for this moment, not just the students.

The idea around a medical school in Camden goes back 40 years; so this idea has been out and about for a while and were really very pleased for all the people that kept this dream alive that we now have the opportunity to get this school started, says Dr. Katz.

See original here:
Special Ceremony Held For Inaugural Class Of Cooper Medical School

Newswise Mount Sinai School of Medicine has signed an agreement with Coursera.org that will make Mount Sinai graduate and medical school courses freely available online.

Mount Sinai will begin by offering three courses that focus on training students to use computation to convert the information in large and small data-sets in biomedical sciences to understand disease progression, adverse events in individual patients, and to predict efficacy of drug therapy. The three courses Introduction to Systems Biology, Networks Analyses in Systems Biology, and Mathematical Models in Systems Biology will be offered in 2013. The courses provide a solid basis for understanding the new era of personalized and precision medicine that is being made possible by advanced gene sequencing technologies.

John Morrison, PhD, Dean of the Mount Sinai Graduate School of Biological Sciences, said, The rigorous courses that we are putting up on Coursera, the planned interactions and the testing formats have the ability to completely change graduate education. Today, like most schools, our programs have one to two years of classes followed by several years of research or clinical training. If the online formats take hold then didactic learning can be interspersed through the research or clinical training years. We can also offer our courses world-wide for free, thus greatly enhancing the reach of our educational mission.

Leading Mount Sinais effort to put courses online is Ravi Iyengar, PhD, The Rosenstiel Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics and Director of Systems Biology Center New York.

My sense is we are at a transformative time in higher education and Coursera is one driver of this change both for off- and on-campus education, said Dr. Iyengar. The ability to provide free high quality courses in an emerging area of biomedical sciences provides us with exciting opportunities to engage current and future scholars world-wide. For graduate students, such online courses will allow them to get formal training in new areas as their research interests start to gel. For medical students it will allow them to learn details and mechanisms as they see patients. In pharmacology, it would be great to teach in an integrated manner drug action mechanisms and drug usage as students go through their clerkships, rather than in a classroom a year or two earlier. Online courses may well allow to accomplish this goal.

The development of these courses has been supported in part by a Systems Biology Center grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health.

About The Mount Sinai Medical Center

The Mount Sinai Medical Center encompasses both The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Established in 1968, Mount Sinai School of Medicine is one of the leading medical schools in the United States. The Medical School is noted for innovation in education, biomedical research, clinical care delivery, and local and global community service. It has more than 3,400 faculty in 32 departments and 14 research institutes, and ranks among the top 20 medical schools both in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding and by U.S. News & World Report.

The Mount Sinai Hospital, founded in 1852, is a 1,171-bed tertiary- and quaternary-care teaching facility and one of the nations oldest, largest and most-respected voluntary hospitals. In 2011, U.S. News & World Report ranked The Mount Sinai Hospital 14th on its elite Honor Roll of the nations top hospitals based on reputation, safety, and other patient-care factors. Mount Sinai is one of 12 integrated academic medical centers whose medical school ranks among the top 20 in NIH funding and U.S. News & World Report and whose hospital is on the U.S. News & World Report Honor Roll. Nearly 60,000 people were treated at Mount Sinai as inpatients last year, and approximately 560,000 outpatient visits took place.

For more information, visit http://www.mountsinai.org. Find Mount Sinai on: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mountsinainyc Twitter @mountsinainyc YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/mountsinainy

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Mount Sinai School of Medicine Bringing Free Courses Online

MOUNT PLEASANT, MI Central Michigan Universitys medical school continues to move forward, and now has approval from the Higher Learning Commission.

The commissions approval of the College of Medicines degree means CMU can offer and grant doctor of medicine degrees.

The College of Medicine will open in summer 2013 with its first class of 60 students.

The college has received 1,972 applications. Admissions are open until Dec. 15.

The approval includes access to Title IV funding and allows CMU medical school students to apply for federal financial aid and receive full financial aid packages.

This is a positive step in the recruitment of the first class of medical students, providing the opportunity for them to receive their financial aid packages right away upon being accepted to the college, said Claudia Douglass, interim vice provost for academic affairs.

The Higher Learning Commission Institutional Actions Council will conduct a site visit in the 2013-14 school year to CMUs College of Medicine to assess the programs quality.

CMU Medical Education Partners, which includes both hospitals, will manage five residency programs, emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, surgery and plan a sixth in psychiatry.

The Saginaw medical school locations for clinical education will be at 600 Irving near Covenant and at Hoyt and South Franklin near St. Marys.

The hospitals are expected to contribute more than $16 million to graduate medical education.

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CMU receives approval from Higher Learning Commission to grant doctor of medicine degrees

The University of Michigan Medical School will be honoring those that have donated their bodies to science in a memorial service 6 p.m. Wednesday at Rackham Auditorium in Ann Arbor.

The ceremony includes remarks by medical students for the families of those who have given anatomical gifts to medical education and research, and usually is attended by about 1,000 people, said Dean Mueller, coordinator of the Anatomical Donations Program at U-M.

University of Michigan Medical School students hand flowers to family members of anatomical gift donors during a memorial service in 2007. The school's annual memorial service is 6 p.m. Wednesday.

Courtesy of U-M

The Medical School receives about 300 anatomical gifts per year, and has been hosting the memorial ceremony annually in September since the first anatomical gift donations to the university were recorded in 1817 - before the formation of the medical school.

About 7,000 people have pre-registered to donate their bodies to the program, Mueller said. The next of kin also can determine if they want to donate a body to the program.

Med students wear their white lab coats during the ceremony and are able to connect with the families of the people who donated their bodies. The students also are very involved with the planning and execution of the event, Mueller said.

Theres sadness and laughter, and a great appreciation for what goes on, Mueller said.

Originally posted here:
U-M Medical School to host service in memory of anatomical gift donors