University of Virginia School of Medicine

History

The UVA Health System’s history can be traced to the founding of the University of Virginia in 1819. At the first meeting of the university’s Board of Visitors in 1819, a School of Medicine was authorized. The School of Medicine – the 10th medical school in the U.S. – officially opened in March 1825 with a single professor, Dr. Robley Dunglison, recruited by Thomas Jefferson to UVA from London. The University of Virginia School of Medicine graduated its first four students in 1828, and in 1832, became the first medical school in the United States to standardize the criteria for admission.

More than 75 years later, UVA opened its first hospital in March 1901 with 25 beds and three operating rooms. Just as medical education has been a part of UVA since its founding, so too has medical literature – the 8,000 books purchased by Jefferson to create the University Library included 710 books on the medical sciences. UVA’s medical literature moved to the UVA Medical School building in 1929. Its current home was dedicated in April 1976.

In 2016, UVA announced a partnership with Inova Fairfax to establish a satellite campus at the flagship Inova hospital in Northern Virginia. This agreement also included the establishment of a personal genomics center and a collaboration between the cancer centers of the two entities.

Reputation

In 2016, U.S. News & World Report ranked the UVA School of Medicine 28th in the nation for research and 25th for primary care. UVA is one of just five schools in the mid-Atlantic region, including Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to be included in the Top 30 in the research category.

Facilities

The School of Medicine is affiliated with the University of Virginia Health System.

The UVA Hospital is a large tertiary care hospital with more than 500 beds, not including a 45-bed neonatal intensive care unit and 20-bed nursery. The Children's Hospital is served by the Newborn Emergency Transport System (NETS), which transports critically ill newborns and pediatrics from all over the surrounding area and states back to UVA. The hospital is a Level I trauma center and is accessible by ambulance as well as Pegasus, UVA Health System’s air and ground transport service for critically ill and injured patients. As an academic medical center, patients at UVA are treated by physicians who are also faculty members at the UVA School of Medicine.

The Claude Moore Health Sciences Library serves the School of Medicine and the Health System and is located within the Medical Center.

In 2016, UVA Hospital was named the number 1 hospital in Virginia.

Clinical Education

UVA utilizes a unique "Next Generation" integrated curriculum that allows medical students to spend more time in the clinic by condensing the first 2 years of classes into 1.5 years. Students then take Step 1 before entering the clinic in the spring of their second year. UVA features accredited programs (via the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education) of resident and fellowship education in general, specialty, and subspecialty fields.

Research

UVA has many highly regarded departments with over 300 labs.

Laboratories are mainly housed in Medical Center in Jordan Hall, MR-4, MR-5, MR-6, and the West Complex (Hospital West).

Founded in 1967, the Department of Perceptual Studies is unique in that it is one of the few academic research groups in the field of "supernatural phenomena" with board-certified physicians and scientists at a respected university.

Research Centers

Historical Milestones and Notable Discoveries

Notable faculty

The faculty of the School of Medicine are recognized nationally and internationally. The faculty includes 15 elected members of the Institute of Medicine and National Academy of Sciences; three members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; 12 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; five recipients of the Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award; four recipients of the Virginia Outstanding Scientist Award; and two recipients of the Virginia Life Achievement Award in Science.

Deans of the School of Medicine

Orange indicates interim Dean.

Medical Scientist Training Program

The University of Virginia School of Medicine is one of only 43 NIH funded MD/PhD programs in the country. The current program director is Dr. Dean H. Kedes. Beginning with the 2016 academic year, the Program will have 55 members and 155 alumni. Notable alumni include Dr. W. Shawn Carbonell, co-founder and CEO of the UCSF spinout OncoSynergy, and Dr. Oliver McDonald.

History

According to the handbook provided to all entering students:

The University of Virginia undertook significant expansion of research and training programs in the basic biomedical sciences during the late 1960s and early 1970s. All chairmen of the basic science departments of the School of Medicine were newly appointed during this time, a major new research building was constructed, and individual departments grew several-fold in size and quality. Similar but less dramatic growth followed in the clinical departments. Interest in the training of medical scientists flourished rapidly in this environment, in part because many of the new faculty either had experience with MSTPs or were recent graduates of such programs. Accordingly, an MSTP committee was appointed in 1971 under the leadership of Dr. Robert C. Haynes, Jr., and funds were provided by the University to initiate such training. An application for training funds was submitted to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) in 1972, just prior to the time when the appropriation for such training programs was withdrawn. The application was resubmitted in 1975, and NIH support was first received in 1977 under the future Nobel Laureate, Dr. Alfred G. Gilman.

As such the program claims two founding dates: 1971 when the MSTP committee was first formed and 1977 when the first students matriculated.