A Look Back: Top 10 Stories of 2017
From a glimpse into the lives of dual-doctor families to the launch of a new initiative with Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, here are the stories that drew the most visitors to the Department of Medicine site last year.
A Unique Scribing Model: The COMET Fellowship for College Graduates
COMET is the brainchild of Steven Lin, MD (clinical assistant professor, primary care and population health who, seeing his colleagues burning out from what he describes as “an explosion of administrative or desk work that is being put on the shoulders of primary care physicians plus the frustrations with the inefficiencies of electronic health record (EHR) systems like EPIC,” proposed a scribe service model with a twist.
Stanford Launches Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies
For the first time, Stanford will offer a master of science program designed to train physician assistants as both clinicians and future leaders in health care Designed for a class of 25 to 30 students, the 30-month program will emphasize training alongside medical students in coursework and clinical care.
Five Meharry Medical College Students Spend Summer at Stanford
In May, five students from Meharry Medical College traveled over 2,000 miles from Nashville to Palo Alto to spend two months living, training, and contributing to the Stanford community, as part of the newly created Stanford Department of Medicine-Meharry Initiative.
JAMA Publication Creates Significant Buzz About Familial Hypercholesterolemia
In a recent publication in JAMA, Knowles and his colleagues describe how they trace the disease throughout a family once they have identified a case. Finding new patients in a family requires cholesterol testing or genetic testing or both.
Meet Stanford's Newest Residents
47 exceptional graduates ‘matched’ with Stanford, and will bring their unique interests, backgrounds, and experiences to campus this summer. “We had an absolutely stellar match this year,” said Ronald Witteles MD, Program Director for the Internal Medicine residency training program. “Every new intern is superbly talented, and we were particularly excited about our recruitment of physician-scientists and the diversity of the incoming class.”
The Lives and Times of Two-Doctor Families
Dual doctor couples are not a novelty: A 2014 survey by AMA Insurance puts that number at 26 percent for physicians under 40 and at 18 percent for physicians 40 to 59. Nor are such couples unusual at Stanford, nor in the Department of Medicine, nor — as it turns out — in the division of nephrology. Among a faculty of 15, four members of the division are married to physicians, all at Stanford, nine in nephrology.
Riding the Immunotherapy Wave of the Future
Today, most pills dispensed to patients — whether for diabetes, cancer or another disease — are made of synthetic proteins or other lifeless molecules. But in the future, infusions of living cells might become the go-to therapies for many conditions.
The Center for Digital Health Is Open for Business
Recent conversations with architects of the School of Medicine’s new Center for Digital Health painted a picture of how the center will address several questions: How useful are digital tools in today’s medical arena? How can they be incorporated into clinical practice? How can patients figure out if products designed for them work or are worth the price?
Across the Pacific
During her medical school days at Brown University and residency at Stanford, Haruko Akatsu, MD, who was born, raised and educated in Japan, got to thinking about the differences between medical education in the two countries.
#WIM Month: Born to Lead
The theme for this year's Women in Medicine Month (#WIMmonth) was "Born to Lead." This annual iniative, sponsored by the American Medical Association, gives us a chance each September to honor women's contributions to medicine.