Perspectives
A Word From the President
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
10 wishes for the new year
by Darrell G. Kirch, MD, AAMC President and CEO
From more affordable health care to greater humanism in medical education, AAMC President and CEO Darrell G. Kirch, MD, outlines his aspirations for 2019.
The integrity of our research depends on the full disclosure of industry relationships
by Darrell G. Kirch, MD, AAMC President and CEO
AAMC President and CEO Darrell G. Kirch, MD, says the failure to disclose potential conflicts of interest harms patients and the medical profession.
Viewpoints
Tuesday, February 05, 2019
Rooting out implicit bias in admissions
by Quinn Capers IV, MD
At one medical school, admissions committee members didn't even know they harbored hidden biases. But some simple training opened their eyes — and the school's doors — to a more diverse body of students.
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Recognizing and stopping human trafficking
by Larissa Truschel, MD, MPH, with Hanni Stoklosa, MD, MPH
The media often portrays victims of human trafficking as young women in developing countries who are kidnapped, sold into slavery, and physically held against their will. But trafficking occurs every day in the United States, too, and physicians must learn to recognize the signs.
Jeff Marquis, a professional chef, loved nothing better than snowboarding, hiking, and mountain biking on the trails near his Montana home. Then, in 2011, catastrophe struck. Marquis, 29 at the time, was thrown from his bike. “I remember lying on the ground, realizing my hands weren’t working right and I couldn’t get up,” he says.
Marquis was told that a severe spinal cord injury meant he’d never stand or walk on his own again. But during rehabilitation, he learned about the efforts of researchers at the University of Louisville School of Medicine who were testing whether implanted electrical stimulators could help restore some movement for paralyzed patients. “I decided to go for it,” he recalls.
Five years later, Marquis stood on a specially designed treadmill at the university’s Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center and took his first tentative steps. Thanks to a revolutionary combination of targeted physical therapy and electrical stimulation of neurons in his spine, Marquis is now able to walk up to a quarter of a mile, using horizontal poles for balance.
Academic Medicine in the News
Thursday, February 07, 2019
Giving children the chance to see clearly
Two-thirds of Arkansan children fail their school vision screenings without receiving follow-up eye care. To help remedy this, volunteer physicians, medical students, and optometrists from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences joined the nonprofit organization Rural Ophthalmology Optometry Treatment and Screening on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to provide free eye exams and prescription eyeglasses for almost 70 school-aged children.
Thursday, February 07, 2019
Medical student launches LGBTQ+ health care publication
A second year medical student at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine recently launched the online publication, Pride in Practice, to offer more comprehensive LGBTQ+ health care education for medical students, residents, physicians, and other health care workers.
Thursday, February 07, 2019
Effective method for reducing hospital stay after operation
Clinicians at Thomas Jefferson University have shown, through a controlled study, that providing pancreatic cancer patients intensive care after a pancreaticoduodenectomy, or Whipple operation, can help reduce the length of their hospital stay, therefore reducing costs and allowing them to transition more quickly to the next phase of treatment.
