Member Profile

University of California, San Diego School of Medicine

Background

The University of California Regents voted to establish a School of Medicine on the brand new UC San Diego campus in 1962. As the general campus took shape in the early 1960s, with renowned academicians and scientists recruited from around the country to serve as UC San Diego's founding faculty members, a core group of campus faculty convened to design and develop the new medical school as part of a Health Sciences division.

Their philosophy—to create an innovative academic structure that would closely integrate the medical school curriculum with the already-outstanding general campus science curriculum, with campus faculty participating in teaching the basic science courses—has created a strong foundation for collaborative research and scientific scholarship in addition to clinical training.

The first UCSD School of Medicine class matriculated in 1968. Today, the school welcomes 122 new students each year, with over 500 medical students including over 70 M.D.-Ph.D. students, and over 850 medical faculty.

Medical education is supported by a broad base of disciplines across the campus, from biology, chemistry and engineering, to marine sciences and the UC San Diego-based California Institute for Telecommunication and Information Technology (Calit2), enriching the medical students' educational and training experience. The school's departments combine research, teaching and clinical care to further integrate the missions; only two departments have an exclusive academic and research focus. This has positioned UCSD to be a leading center for translational research, working with partners in San Diego's thriving biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry to move discovery from the laboratory, into development and then into clinical trials.

The school attracts over $250 million in DHHS funding annually. UC San Diego has also been a leading recipient of stem cell funding through the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, created after the passage of Proposition 71 to provide support for research using human stem cells. UCSD is collaborating with other research institutions in La Jolla to create a major center for regenerative medicine research in San Diego.

UC San Diego's early emphasis on providing a strong basic science curriculum is complemented by a superb clinical program, and opportunities to participate in community outreach, international health programs, and a range of research projects from the laboratory bench to the migrant camp. UC San Diego's Student Run Free Clinic project is just one example of a volunteer opportunity that combines clinical experience, public service and research in a successful community program that today serves as a model for other cities.

The medical school's La Jolla campus complex, which began with a Basic Science Building and Biomedical Library on UCSD's La Jolla campus, has grown to encompass the Medical Teaching Facility, Stein Clinical Research Building, the Center for Molecular Genetics, the Leichtag Biomedical Research Building, and the Cellular and Molecular Medicine building complex, with one building named the George Palade Laboratories after Nobel Laureate and retired Dean for Scientific Affairs George Palade, M.D. The Basic Science Building has recently been renamed the Biomedical Science Building to better reflect the life sciences focus of the school's extensive research effort.

UCSD's new Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences building is also located on the Health Sciences campus adjacent to the medical school, with each new class of 60 pharmacy students joining medical students in several common classes.

Clinical Mission

The healing mission of UCSD Health Sciences is fulfilled through an expanding medical enterprise that offers a spectrum of services, from primary to tertiary and quaternary care. When the medical school first opened, UC San Diego leased the former County Hospital building in Hillcrest, about 12 miles south of the campus, as its primary teaching site. The Veterans Affairs Medical Center opened adjacent to the UCSD campus in 1972, becoming a clinical, research and teaching partner, a relationship that is still going strong. More recently, UCSD entered into an affiliation with the Rady Children's Hospital, the site of most of the medical school's pediatric programs, and medical school faculty work with hospitals, medical practices and community clinics throughout the County, which also provide learning opportunities for UCSD students.

Over the past 40 years, UCSD's health system has grown in size and stature, as San Diego's only academic health center. The UCSD Medical Center-Hillcrest has been modernized and expanded, and now anchors a complex that includes research facilities and ambulatory care practices. The UCSD Medical Center-La Jolla opened in the early 1990s with the Thornton Hospital, Perlman Ambulatory Care Center and Shiley Eye Center. The Moores UCSD Cancer Center, a National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center, is also based on the La Jolla campus, and a new cardiovascular center that will also expand Thornton Hospital's capacity will begin at the end of 2007. The Shiley Eye Center is also expanding, and like the Cancer Center has included research laboratories in its clinical facilities to support the translational research focus of the faculty. Plans for a new bed tower at Thornton Hospital are also underway, with completion of the 125-150 bed addition planned for 2014.

In addition to the cancer, eye and heart centers, the hospitals provide many specialized regional services including Level 1 Trauma, the Regional Burn Center, the UCSD Stroke Center, high-risk obstetrics and a 40-bed neonatal intensive care unit set for expansion, organ and bone marrow transplantation, the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, a major HIV/AIDS clinical and research program, and advanced imaging technologies.

Innovation and Growth

• UCSD has received a $1 million grant from the California Telemedicine and eHealth Center (CTEC) to support the development and implementation of a Southern California Telemedicine Learning Center (TLC). The Southern California TLC will be based on the UC San Diego campus, with training and Continuing Medical Education opportunities to be provided in remote sites.

• The medical school is gearing up to expand medical student enrollment through the new Program in Medical Education: Health Equity (PRIME-HEq) program. This new program will recruit additional students to the annual entering class of 122 medical students, and is designed specifically to train physicians to serve in underserved communities, with a telemedicine focus. A new medical education building is in the planning stages to accommodate the expanded class and support a state-of-the-art telemedicine training curriculum.

• UCSD Medical Center is piloting a project that allows Community Clinic providers who serve low income patients access to the medical records of Clinic patients seen in the UCSD Medical Center Emergency Department, specialty clinics, or discharged from a UCSD hospital, to improve continuity of care for these patients. Another project, IMPACT-ED (Improving Medical home and Primary care Access to the Community clinics Through the ED) is using an internet-based system accessible by both the UCSD Emergency Department and local area community clinics to schedule primary care clinic appointments for ED patients who do not have a regular source of primary care or medical home.

• UCSD Medical Center and the UCSD Medical Group are leaders in implementing advanced information technologies. In fact UCSD Medical Center has been named among the nation's 100 "most wired," and 25 "most wireless" hospitals, by Hospitals and Health Networks.

• A current project: hospitalized patients at UCSD now get a barcode on their hospital identification wristband which improves medication delivery. The bar code corresponds to the patient identified in the medication order, to ensure the correct patient is receiving the correct medication. The health care provider can scan the information easily using a portable computer and scanner. The computer program contains a profile of all the medications that specific patient is taking, and how the drug needs to be as well as the time. The bar coded wrist band is one additional safety feature of UCSD's computerized integrated medication system.

• Another example of telemedicine in action is UCSD's STRokE-DOC program, which provides long-distance consultation by UCSD stroke specialists to emergency rooms in San Diego and Imperial Counties using a wireless, interactive audiovisual "tele-consultation" technology.