| Nationally and internationally recognized leaders in their fields, department faculty participate significantly at virtually every level in the life of the University and College as well as University and VA Medical Center Hospitals. The current Iowa City VA Chief of Staff, the VA Associate Chief of Staff for Research and Education, the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics Chief of Staff, the Director of the Joint Office Clinical Outreach Services and Clinical Care Coordination, the UI Carver College of Medicine Senior Associate Dean and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs, and the President of the University of Iowa have all been appointed from the ranks of department faculty.
Tenure track basic science and clinical investigators make up 65% of the department faculty with a growing number of clinical track faculty joining in recent years. Physician faculty from both tracks are consistently chosen to be among the annual Best Doctors in America report while medicine subspecialty clinical areas routinely appear in the U.S. News and World Report yearly ranking of America's Best Hospitals (in 2002: oncology, rheumatology, and pulmonary diseases). In the past three decades alone, 17 members of the department have served 27 terms as presidents of 17 regional and national professional societies. Four individuals served terms as president of the American Federation for Medical Research; and two each served presidential terms for the Central Society for Clinical Research, American Heart Association, American Motility Society, Association of Medicine and Psychiatry, and the Association of American Physicians.
The research environment in the Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa is outstanding. Among public medical schools, the College of Medicine and the College of Public Health rank 11 th and 5 th in NIH funding in both the number of grants and total grant dollars per research faculty in public medical schools. The Department of Internal Medicine research budget is $45 million, with $37 million in federal grants from the NIH or 40% of the federal research budget to the entire College of Medicine. Combined NIH and VA funding to department faculty makes up 75% of all research funds received by department investigators.
Department faculty are successfully committed to a wide variety of research themes that include vascular biology, hypertension, membrane biology, diabetes, lymphoma, inflammation, viral pathogenesis, bio-defense, epithelial biology, gene therapy, antibiotic resistance, clinical trials, and health services research. Eighteen University of Iowa Research Centers (including two NIH Program Project Grants, a Specialized Center of Research, a General Clinical Research Center and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Laboratory) are directed by department faculty. Six UI Core Research Facilities providing critical services to the entire UI health science research campus are also directed by department faculty. With 100,000 square feet of lab space already committed to these efforts, the department is looking forward to significant additional research space.
Clinical activity in the department is robust and growing. In 2001-2002, over 95,000 ambulatory outpatients were seen in specialty clinics at UI Hospitals and Clinics and around the State of Iowa in Outreach Clinics. For the same period, 6,500 patients were seen in medicine inpatient units. Responding to new models of health care delivery and collaborative management, the department is leading the way at Iowa in the development of multidisciplinary clinical centers. The UI Family Care Center offers primary ambulatory health care that covers the spectrum of primary specialties with general internists, family physicians, and pediatricians all practicing within the same facility. The Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center coordinates all cancer-related research, education, and patient care throughout the university of Iowa by faculty from 38 departments in six colleges, as well as UI Hospitals and Clinics. UI Heart Care provides a complete range of heart health care services. The Clifton Center for Digestive Diseases coordinates the clinical services of internal medicine, pediatrics, and surgery for patients with all types of gastroenterological and hepatological problems. A Hospitalist Program designed and coordinated by faculty in the Division of General Internal Medicine was launched in 2002.
The Department of Internal Medicine is fully committed to the complete
spectrum of medical education for medical student didactic and clinical education,
resident training, fellow training as well as in-house, local, regional, and
national continuing medical education programs for physicians in practice. Department
faculty played crucial roles in the total redesign of the College of Medicine
curriculum, which was begun in 1991 and implemented in 1995 and is housed today
in the impressive, new Medical Education and Research Facility (MERF) at the
center of the health care campus. In a bold new approach to student life and
education, the UI College of Medicine student body was reorganized into four
Communities, each populated by a heterogeneous selection of students from each
year of study and provided a home in MERF. Two communities are directed by Department
of Internal Medicine faculty. Department faculty have also provided critical
leadership in the successful creation of unique new training programs including
the Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellowship Training Program for medical students;
the NIH K30 Iowa Scholars in Clinical Investigation Program for postdoctoral
trainees and junior faculty; the Graduate Program in Translational Biomedical
Research and the Medical Scientist Training Program for M.D./Ph.D. students.
The recent addition of a Director of Curriculum Development in the department will assist significantly in a new departmental effort to create links between medical student, house staff, and CME programs in an endeavor to cultivate life-long learning habits among students at every stage in their career. One outcome of this new direction is the creation of a teaching resident rotation within the Internal Medicine Residency Training Program. As a complement to the existing research pathway, this new rotation will give residents the opportunity to develop teaching skills in preparation for an academic career. This and other residency training innovations make it important to note that in an era of declining interest among medical students in the specialty of internal medicine, the UI Department of Internal Medicine Residency Training Program filled each of its 20 categorical and 5 preliminary internship positions for 2003-2004. All 20 Iowa resident graduates taking the internal medicine board certification exam in 2002 passed with 12 scoring at the 90 th percentile or higher.
The Department of Internal Medicine is working closely with development officers from the University of Iowa Foundation to actively solicit external funding from cooperate and private donors. These funds are being used for endowed chairs and professorships; startup funding for young faculty; and, seed funding for new education and research initiatives. Current Foundation funding exceeds 21 million dollars including seven endowed chairs and one endowed professorship.
In summary, Department of Internal Medicine research, clinical and education programs are healthy and energetic, indelibly linked to one another by faculty who are passionate about their careers, their patients, and their students and dedicated to the principles of innovation and renewal. |
