Cardiology Grand Rounds to Address "Pregnancy and Heart Disease"

Dr. Marc G. Cribbs, assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, director of the Alabama Adult Congenital Heart Disease Program and director of the Comprehensive Pregnancy & Heart Program at UAB, will present the next cardiology grand rounds.

He will present "Pregnancy and Heart Disease" at 11:30 a.m. Friday, Feb. 22, at the University Hospital second-floor conference center.

In his talk he will discuss the cardiovascular changes in pregnancy, pregnancy risk assessment and the means by which risks are managed.

For more information, contact Donna Gregory at (251) 471-7923 or dgregory@health.southalabama.edu.

Med School Café - Expert Advice for the Community

The February Med School Café lecture featured Dr. Allen Perkins, professor and chair of family medicine at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine, and Dr. Errol Crook, Professor and Abraham Mitchell Chair of Internal Medicine at the USA College of Medicine and director of the USA Center for Healthy Communities. They presented “Precision Medicine: The Future is Now.”

Watch Med School Café: Precision Medicine on YouTube or below.

 

USA Office of CME Receives Interprofessional Continuing Education Joint Accreditation

The University of South Alabama Office of Continuing Medical Education (OCME) recently received four-year accreditation as a provider of Interprofessional Continuing Education (IPCE).

As a jointly accredited provider, USA OCME can now offer education and continuing education credits to physicians, nurses and pharmacists, together or separately, through the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, the American Nurses Credentialing Center, and the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education. Other disciplines have been added including American Psychology Association and the Association of Social Work Boards.

Joint Accreditation offers organizations the opportunity to be simultaneously accredited to provide medicine, pharmacy, and nursing continuing education activities through a single, unified set of accreditation standards. Joint Accreditation promotes IPCE activities specifically designed to improve interprofessional collaborative practice in health care delivery to achieve a common goal of improving patient care.

"Joint Accreditation signifies to clinicians and to the public that continuing health care education activities provided by the USA Office of Continuing Medical Education meet the high standards for commercial support of Joint Accreditation," said Sharrie Cranford, director of continuing medical education at USA. "USA OCME’s educational programming ultimately serves all disciplines that may have an impact on patient outcomes."

The Joint Accreditation process rigorously evaluates the overall continuing health care education programs of institutions according to standards adopted by all three sponsoring organizations. USA OCME continuing education program is now part of a group of elite organizations in the United States - including major medical schools, national medical associations, hospitals and other medical education organizations - that have been awarded this accreditation status.

USA OCME also provides continuing education credits to psychologists, social workers and other professions for their educational activities at their annual meeting and in other live and enduring programs and materials throughout the year.

Learn more at www.jointaccreditation.org.

The Doctor Is In (the Art Studio)

The art of Dr. Thomas C. Myers, a rheumatologist with USA Physicians Group, is on display at the University of South Alabama department of art and art history gallery through March 15. 

Dr. Thomas C. Myers remembers clearly how his wife’s attraction to an antique Russian bed featured in a magazine was the catalyst for his art career 13 years ago.

“I looked at the picture of that bed, and I told her I could make it,” he recalled. “I built it within a few months, and she was happy. At the same time, I also found a passion and a love for working with wood.”

Feb. 11-March 15, the art gallery in the University of South Alabama’s department of art and art history will present a variety of Myers’ work in the show, “Felled Flesh: The Practice of Turning Wood.” He will discuss his artistic journey during an artist talk at 3 p.m. on March 7. A reception will follow from 4-6 p.m.

It is the latest art show for the modest and self-taught wood turner, who said he often sees the wood as flesh while he works. His creations have been displayed at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans and the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, among others.

“When I was growing up, if my dad wanted something, he would build it. He always had books about art in our house. I grew up watching him work and learning from him,” said Myers, a rheumatologist with USA Physicians Group who practices at the USA Mobile Diagnostic Center. 

As an undergraduate, Myers took an art appreciation class, but afterward he focused on his medical studies. After he built the Russian reproduction bed for his wife, he began experimenting with various types of wood and buying a variety of new tools, including a lathe for woodturning. It was then that he found his own expression of art.

The Myers home is filled with examples of his work, both small and large in a variety of shapes and forms. Some resemble baskets, bowls and vases, while others are pure abstracts. Some are painted to bring out what Myers envisioned in the wood as he turned it. Each one’s surface is as smooth as glass, its sheen lustrous.

“It took me about 10 years to find out what I was doing. I didn’t look at anyone else’s art or wood turnings for the first eight years. Then, I bought a book by an English wood turner, and I really began to learn some things,” he said.

His favorite wood is maple, which is flesh-colored, and he likes pieces with unusual markings caused by growth patterns or even damage to the tree at some point during its life. He orders most of his wood on the internet, buying from around the world.

When he isn’t seeing patients, he is often working in an immaculate studio behind the couple’s Spring Hill home. In the artfully landscaped garden outside is a life-sized sculpture in bronze of a woman, the last piece of artwork done by his father before he died, and a reminder of both the skill and creativity that Myers shared with him.

Myers said most of his ideas “usually come to me in the middle of the night,” then the actual work takes roughly 40 hours per piece.

“My enjoyment of and passion for my work originates in that pre-intellectual realm where sight, touch, smell and sound guide the interaction of artist, tool and medium as a work emerges. After that my work becomes increasingly conceptual as I view the work, decide on texture, additional media and finish,” Myers said.

Susan Fitzsimmons, chair of the department art and art history, said that Myers’ work demonstrates that “talent is a word that is often misused, as if there is some alchemy or grace that exists in some, but not others.”

She added: “Art, particularly the art of Tom Myers, who as a child observed his father's work as a sculptor, learned early on that art comes from a passion to make, to understand the self, discipline, and hard work. Dr. Myers has spent many years perfecting his work, combining the precision of his science background with the demands of this difficult craft. His vocation as a doctor and artist are mutually reinforcing and rewarding. Sometimes, I am sure, that his struggle to find form in the wood and model it to perfection, reflect the struggle with diagnosing illness, which also requires careful observation and learning from the source in order to bring forth the cure. The benefit of art is that it captures the struggle in fixed time and form, an object with a permanence that defies us all in real life."

Additional information about Myers and photos of his art can be seen at www.tommyersart.com.

USA College of Medicine Establishes New Residency Program in Emergency Medicine

From left, Dr. Edward Panacek, Dr. Paul Henning and Dr. Larry Mellick have led the establishment of the new residency training program in emergency medicine.

The University of South Alabama College of Medicine has been approved by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) to establish a new residency training program in emergency medicine.  

The program received accreditation in January and will welcome the first class of residents in July. Emergency medicine is a three-year residency training program, and USA will have six residents per year for a total of 18 residents. The department is actively interviewing candidates and will participate in the National Residency Matching Program on March 15. The program may also accept residents with advanced training and transfers from other residency programs. 

“Alabama has an extreme shortage of board-certified emergency medicine physicians, ranking 49th out of 50 states for the number of qualified emergency physicians per capita,” said Dr. Edward Panacek, professor and chair of emergency medicine at the USA College of Medicine. He attributes this shortage to the lack of residency training programs in the state.

“Establishing the USA emergency medicine residency program will help us better meet the needs of the health care of the citizens of Alabama in two ways,” said Dr. John Marymont, vice president for medical affairs and dean of the USA College of Medicine. “In addition to the patient care we provide, as an academic health center we also play a vital role in regional workforce development, as most of our resident physician graduates choose to set up their practice close to where they complete their training.”

According to Dr. Panacek, who graduated from the USA College of Medicine in 1981, the majority of physicians, particularly emergency medicine physicians, end up practicing within 50 to 100 miles of where they finish their training, whether it’s the end of residency or the end of fellowship. “Alabama currently experiences a brain drain,” he said, “because we produce medical school graduates but then have had to send them to other states for emergency medicine residency training. The majority of them are not coming back. Our goal is to change this.”

Dr. Paul Henning, associate professor of emergency medicine, said the new emergency medicine residency program at USA – the second in the state of Alabama – will help fill the need for quality emergency-trained and trauma-experienced medical physicians not just in large cities but also rural parts of the state. 

Dr. Henning joined USA last fall to take on a leadership role with the residency program, initially as associate director and later as program director. He is one of several new hires in the emergency medicine department, as the ACGME requires a minimum number of qualified core faculty members in order to establish a new residency program. 

“Essentially, the academic department faculty have largely been built from the ground up over three years,” Dr. Panacek said. “We needed to attract and hire enough emergency medicine academic faculty to get a new residency approved. But without the EM residency yet established, they had to come on a bit of a hope and a prayer – a leap of faith. But, each time one was hired, it made it easier to hire the next.”

In addition to hiring enough new faculty, Dr. Panacek said the process to apply for a new residency program was lengthy and tedious. Once the program proposal was approved internally, the university applied for accreditation to the ACGME. This required detailed documentation of how the program would both operate and provide sufficient educational experiences for residents. 

Having joined USA last spring, Dr. Larry Mellick, professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine and vice chair of academic affairs for emergency medicine at the USA College of Medicine, assisted in the application process and will serve as assistant director of the residency program. “An emergency medicine residency is very competitive and, like other popular residencies, attracts the cream of the crop of students,” he said. “Because of that, I have found over the years that other services love to have emergency medicine residents rotating with them.”

The new residency program in emergency medicine coincides with the groundbreaking for the new Fanny Meisler Trauma Center at University Hospital, scheduled to open in summer 2020. The new construction will more than double the size and modernize the space, enhancing the hospital’s ability to care for patients with traumatic injuries and respond to mass casualties.