Hi, I’m Amy Jones-Timoney from the University of Kentucky and today we are joined by Dean
Dr. Robert DiPaola from the College of Medicine.
Thank you so much for showing us around today.
Yeah, absolutely!
You know I’m happy to do that.
So, we’re in the simulation center here over in Chandler and as we kind of walk through
if you can just start us off by talking a little bit about why personally you are so
passionate about medicine.
Well I think you know it’s incredible and as you know the University of Kentucky College
of Medicine and UK Healthcare has actually grown over actually quite a few years.
In terms of numbers of students that we train, a number of residents and fellows that we
train, numbers of researchers and educators that we train as well as what we do in terms
of key missions in term of clinical care especially for Kentucky.
Key missions in terms of education and research as well a wonderful thing about it is in academic
medical centers.
It’s all integrated everything from you know the basic sciences that are at the laboratory
and discoveries and bringing that into the clinic and our students have an opportunity
to witness all of that and this is an incredible facility where our students, residents, fellows,
and other healthcare workforce have an opportunity to practice their skills in many of the interventions
that we need to properly take care of patients.
You can see here by some of the rooms that these are set up like a room that would be
in the hospital or in an operating room or in an emergency room setting so that our students
have an opportunity to really practice and learn when they’re here in their training.
Simulation has become a big part of medical education throughout the country.
What does it take to be a medical student at the University of Kentucky?
We look for students that have a number of characteristics.
Obviously grades you know are important in terms of our admissions process, there’s
a national exam, the MCAT exam, we have what we call core competencies and it includes
professionalism and includes the ability to communicate well with patients with coworkers.
We look at the ability of students to work in teams to understand how to connect with
various disciplines and bring that together for the best care of a particular patient.
So, it’s not only the academic skills but it’s also the communication skills, the
social skills, the professionalism skills that are requires for you know our very best
future of medicine physicians amongst the core competencies it includes a lifelong learning
approach and critical thinking.
I mean there if you actually ask the question of gee when new evidence comes up, how often
do we have new things that a physician out in practice needs to pay attention to and
right now if you were to ask that question, there’s almost a doubling of the published
evidence every four years or so.
So physicians out there or in practice or in an academic environment or the University
of our hospital environment are really needing are really needing to understand how to have
lifelong learning to take those evidences that come up and figure out how to use them
for the best benefit of their patients and keep up with that on a regular basis.
We spend a lot of time in terms of training our students to be lifelong learners and it’s
going to be a critical piece going forward.
You have learners beyond medical students, correct?
We train scientists, we train instructors here that will go on in careers to teach or
do research.
We train residence and fellows so that’s where beyond medical school they learn their
particular specialty of choice.
We have programs here with over 800 residents and fellows.
We had an increase in our medical school class recently with two new campus expansions one
in Bowling Green and one in Northern Kentucky which will increase our class size within
the next four years or so.
We really look forward to training or our future positions to help us here in Kentucky.
It’s definitely cool to see some of the spaces where that training is taking place
but now, we’re going to head across campus so we can talk a little more about research
and some broader goals of the college of medicine.
Absolutely, I would be happy to show you.
Thank you!
We’ve made our way over to research building.
Tell me about why this space is so important to the College of Medicine.
This has been incredible to the growth of research to really all of the colleges throughout
campus and especially the College of Medicine as well and as you can see many of the areas
here in these open areas foster collaboration.
It allows us to recruit the very best and you know for some of our very best opportunities
for their research with more space, so the facility has been and had already a tremendous
impact.
We were able to recruit our new chair of toxicology cancer biology.
Here is one of the first occupants and we will in a little while see his laboratory
as well and I don’t think that we would have been in a position to attract some of
these absolute superstars.
In fact, he is a faculty member that came over from Purdue with four RO1’s, which
are each in them of themselves very competitive grants in prostate cancer biology which allows
us to grow a whole new area that can then feed into what we do in terms of the clinical
end from these discoveries to impact patients in need in Kentucky.
Let’s head upstairs and talk a little bit more about that connection between research
and clinical care.
So, we’ve made our way to the lab space here in RV.
Tell me a little bit about how important it is that the research that you’re doing is
actually translating into the kind of care that you have in your clinical programs.
Well, as you know it is incredibly important that we continue to have new discoveries.
We have many patients in need.
Many areas at least on the medical front that still new therapies and new options.
It’s really through new discovery here at the bench where we are able to come up with
new areas where we have new targets and new therapies in multiple different areas in terms
of cardiovascular research, in terms of cancer, in terms of neuroscience research, in terms
of addiction research, in terms of diabetes and obesity just as a few examples of some
of our signature areas.
Some of the programs that we’ve launched are trying to bring people together in larger
teams.
Mentioned, this multidisciplinary value program or MVP that brought together teams of more
basic scientists with clinical researchers to take some of the discoveries that are in
a laboratory and get them into the clinic.
I mean examples include areas related to cardiovascular and neuroscience and cancer.
We also have another area that we’re focusing on and that’s what we call implementation
science so for the discoveries that have occurred and evidence that we have proven, getting
that out into the community is a goal that we have in terms of greater impact in terms
of greater impact for those patients in need throughout the state of Kentucky and beyond.
It’s clear that through education, through clinical care, through research, the College
of Medicine is really having an impact on the state and around the country and the globe.
Is there anything else that you would like the rest of campus to know about your college?
I think that our college is incredibly collaborative.
We have very strong researchers, very strong leaders in areas in research in all the key
areas.
I think that one of our strengths is this passion that we see many of our faculty have
to actually do their very best to actually have impact with the research that they do
toward healthcare and patient care and being all in one system as an academic Medical Center
allows us to take it right from discovery to have impact.
But I think the collaborative nature of our researchers and the strength of our researchers
is just absolutely amazing here at the University of Kentucky.
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to show us around these wonderful new spaces
today.
We really appreciate it
Absolutely, happy to do that.
And if you would like more information on the College of Medicine, just visit the website
on the screen.