2 0 0 5 Keiji Fukuda, MD ’83 Leading the Fight

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Keiji Fukuda, MD ’83 Leading the Fight Against Influenza at the CDC

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the place where your medical career began.

Recall the good times. Renew old friendships.

Reconnect with faculty. Revisit

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FEATURES FROM THE DEAN

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9 A new chair, a transatlantic research network, winter driving for medical students, and more.

HALL A PRESIDENT ’ S CORNER CLASS NOTES DEVELOPMENT NEWS OBITUARIES

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Standardized Patients help mold the performance of future physicians.

by jeffery lindholm

22 EASING THE STRAIN

Bruce Beynnon, Ph.D., and his colleagues receive national recognition for their orthopaedic research.

by jon reidel

26 WALKING THE TIGHTROPE

Keiji Fukuda, M.D.’83 treads the fine line between public health and publicity.

Attention Classes of 1940, ’45, ’50, ’55, ’60, ’65, ’70, ’75, ’80, ’85, ’90, ’95, ’00!

by melissa pasanen

he UVM Medical Alumni Association invites you and your family to join us for Reunion 2005—June 10-12, 2005. Come back to Burlington and the UVM campus, your home during medical school. You may have lost contact with your classmates and faculty, but reunion will give you the chance to rekindle old friendships, check out favorite places, talk with faculty, meet medical students, and experience the growth and evolution of your medical alma mater. Events Include: Medical Education Today Session • Tour of the College and the new

Medical Education Center • Golden Reunion Awards and Reception • Continuing Medical Education Seminar • Medical Alumni Picnic • Nostalgia Hour • Class Receptions and Dinners • Lake Champlain Cruise

For more information, call the UVM Medical Development & Alumni Relations Office at (802) 656-4014 or email: [email protected]

Plan ahead—Save the date for your reunion! www.alumni.uvm.edu/com

on the cover: photo by George Duncan, courtesy Peter Hay Fine Art

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FROM THE DEAN

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EDITOR

MEDICAL EDUCATION CENTER

edward neuert

MICHAEL SIPE

Spring is a busy season here at the College of Medicine, and no season in recent years has seen as much activity and promise as this one. Work on our new Medical Education Center, which is being built in cooperation with Fletcher Allen Health Care, is nearing completion. (You can see an aerial view of the project on the opposite page.) In the next few months, workers will put the finishing touches on the center, and our students, faculty and staff will begin making it a new home for much of our educational activity. In the ensuing months, Fletcher Allen’s new Ambulatory Care Center, including a new Emergency Department, will open to the public and will provide our students with state-of-the-art facilities in which to gain important clinical experience. As one article in this issue shows you, those students entering the clinics will have been prepared by the Vermont Integrated Curriculum’s extensive use of standardized patients — highly trained individuals who simulate illness in order to teach and assess medical students. Use of standardized patients is now becoming a major component in national board certification, and the College is on the forefront of using this new method of educating future physicians. The Medical Education Center, and the many educational facilities in Given that have been constructed or revamped in recent years, will bring the promise of our integrative method for physician education into full fruition. Look to these pages in the coming months for more news as our facilities come on-line. Also ahead will be reports on efforts now underway by several task forces charged to examine important areas of change and improvement for the College. Task forces have been formed to focus on Strategic Planning, Governance, Faculty and Staff Development, and Science of Quality Initiatives, respectively. In the near future, these groups will be reporting on their work, and making suggestions for concrete changes for our school. Future issues of Vermont Medicine will contain more news on these important outcomes.

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GIVEN BUILDING

MEDICAL COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR

carole whitaker ASSISTANT

andrea rathje WRITER

jennifer nachbur ART DIRECTOR

elise whittemore-hill

FLETCHER ALLEN AMBULATORY CARE CENTER

UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT COLLEGE OF MEDICINE DEAN

john n. evans, ph.d.

EDITORIAL ADVISORS

rick blount ASSISTANT DEAN FOR DEVELOPMENT & ALUMNI RELATIONS

marilyn j. cipolla, ph.d.’ 97 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF NEUROLOGY

christopher s. francklyn, ph.d. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF BIOCHEMISTRY

CONSTRUCTION UPDATE Construction of the new University of Vermont Medical Education Center, along with the Ambulatory Care Center at Fletcher Allen Health Care, is now within months of completion. Soon, the two institutions, who share joint missions in education, research and patient care, will also be physically linked. New classrooms for large and small group learning will enhance the education of both medical and graduate students, and a new medical library will serve students, faculty and staff, as well as community members. For updates on the Medical Education Center on the web, visit www.med.uvm.edu/mec.

james c. hebert, m.d.’ 77 ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR GRADUATE MEDICAL EDUCATION

russell tracy, ph.d. SENIOR ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR RESEARCH & ACADEMIC AFFAIRS

vermont medicine is published three times a year by the University of Vermont College of Medicine. Articles may be reprinted with permission of the editor. Please send address changes, alumni class notes, letters to the editor, and other correspondence to University of Vermont College of Medicine Alumni Office, Farrell Hall, 210 Colchester Ave, Burlington, VT 05405. telephone: (802) 656-4014 Letters to the editor specifically may be e-mailed to: [email protected]

Pierattini Named Psychiatry Chair & Clinical Leader Robert Pierattini, M.D. has been named chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the College of Medicine and clinical leader of psychiatry at Fletcher Allen. The announcement was made in January by John N. Evans, Ph.D., dean of the University of Vermont College of Medicine, and Melinda Estes, M.D., president and CEO of Fletcher Allen Health Care. Since 2001 Pierattini has served as interim department chair and as interim physician leader. He has played a key role in educating medical students and residents, and has directed the outpatient care portion of the psychiatry residency program since 2000. In 1994, he won the Psychiatry Residents Teaching Award, and in 2002 received the Psychiatry Residents Appreciation Award. He has performed clinical trials in psychopharmacology, and his research interests include the pharmacotherapy of mood and anxiety disorders, the utilization of mental health services, and issues in managed behavioral health care. GORDON MILLER / MEDICAL PHOTOGRAPHY

“Dr. Pierattini has provided outstanding leadership for this important academic and clinical department, as well as in creating and strengthening critical partnerships with the mental health community,” said Dean Evans. “Dr. Estes and I are thrilled that he has agreed to take on this vital role.” After earning his medical degree from Yale, Pierattini completed his Robert Pierattini, M.D. residency in psychiatry in Burlington at the former Medical Center Hospital of Vermont, where he was chief resident in his final year. He joined the UVM physician faculty in 1986 as a clinical instructor, became a clinical assistant professor in 1989, and a clinical associate professor in 1994. In 1995, Pierattini was appointed to an associate professorship, and in 2002 was named full professor. S P R I N G

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UVM Heads Transatlantic Cardiovascular Research Network A new $6 million grant will help researchers at the University of Vermont College of Medicine direct an innovative transatlantic network linking scientists who study blood-clotting disorders at three U.S. and three European universities. The five-year grant is among the first four Transatlantic Networks of Excellence in Cardiovascular Research to be funded by Fondation Leducq, a French institution that supports European-American collaborations in cardiovascular research. Edwin Bovill, M.D., professor and chair of pathology at the College of Medicine and an international expert in the field of blood-clotting disorders (thrombosis) is leader of the project. The project, titled the Leducq International Network Against Thrombosis (LINAT), has in its member institutions the University of Vermont, the University of Washington, and the Oklahoma Medical Research Institute at the University of Oklahoma; and, in Europe, the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, the University of Leuven in Belgium, and the University of Paris. Each institution specializes in a different, yet related aspect of research on the role of thrombosis in arterial and venous vascular disease. According to Bovill, the

RECOGNITION FROM OUR PEERS Vermont Medicine magazine was recognized with an Award of Distinction at the 2004 Association of American Medical Colleges/ Group on Institutional Advancement Awards for Excellence ceremony and reception on November 6 at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston. The AAMC/GIA awards acknowledge “the most creative and effective approaches used to promote academic medicine in the United States through alumni, development, public relations and marketing vehicles.”

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LINAT participants from institutions in Europe and the U.S. viewed each others work in an informal poster session.

focus of the grant is to encourage the exchange of ideas between institutions engaged in similar research and to facilitate faculty and students spending research time at the different institutions. “Like all research studies, this program is a bit of an experiment,” said Bovill, who also serves as U.S. coordinator for the project. “The grant will allow us to more effectively support what we have already been doing, which we hope will lead to the establishment of a sustainable model that amplifies the amount of scientific training and discovery taking place.” Over three days this past December, 54 representatives from the institutions in the network gathered in Burlington to present data from their current studies and discuss which research, technology and facilities will be used for LINAT. In addition to Bovill, site leaders in the project include European coordinator Frits Rosendaal, M.D., Ph.D., Leiden University; Bruce Psaty, M.D., Ph.D., University of Washington; Chuck Esmon, Ph.D., Oklahoma Medical Research Institute; Roger Lignen, Ph.D., University of Leuven; and Martine Aiach, Ph.D., University of Paris. TOP : EDWARD NEUERT; BOTTOM , SABIN GRATZ

RESEARCH MILESTONES HORMONE THERAPY LINKED TO BLOOD CLOTS IN JAMA REPORT Postmenopausal women who take the hormone therapy estrogen plus progestin have double the risk for a potentially fatal condition that causes blood clots to develop in their veins, according to an article in the October 6, 2004 issue of JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association. Lead author of the study Mary Cushman, M.D., an associate professor of medicine at the College of Medicine, and colleagues examined the effects of postmenopausal hormone therapy on venous thrombosis in the presence of age and obesity — two major risk factors for thrombosis. The researchers analyzed final data from the Women’s Health Initiative Estrogen Plus Progestin clinical trial, a double-blind randomized controlled trial of 16,608 postmenopausal women between the ages of 50 and 79 years, who were enrolled in 1993 through 1998 at 40 U.S. clinical centers, with 5.6 years of follow up. “The risk for venous thrombosis with oral contraceptive use has been well quantified but we have not had this information with respect to the use of hormone therapy,” said Barbara Alving, M.D., director of the Women’s Health Initiative and acting director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. “This study now clearly defines the risk of venous thrombosis in women who are taking hormone therapy for a prolonged period of time according to age, obesity, and inherited conditions that can lead to thrombosis.” ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION FUNDS QUALITY EDUCATION GRANT The University of Vermont and Fletcher Allen Health Care have been chosen as one of 12 academic health centers in the country to receive a $25,000 Partnership for Quality Education grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to promote health care quality and safety. Through this program, residents and graduate nursing students at Fletcher Allen and the University of Vermont will go through a Web-based education course, culminating in their proposing plans to improve the quality and safety of patient care. They will use the experiences of their own patients to understand the strengths and shortcomings of the health care system.

SABIN GRATZ

The project is a joint effort between Fletcher Allen’s Institute for Quality and Operational Effectiveness, the Graduate Medical Education Office at Fletcher Allen and the University of Vermont College of Medicine, and the Department of Nursing at the University of Vermont College of Nursing and Health Sciences. Residents from Family Medicine, Surgery, Medicine and Psychiatry will be participating in the program. STUDY FINDS VITAMINS MIGHT HELP SOME CHEMOTHERAPY PATIENTS As the popularity of nutritional supplements soars, health-conscious consumers are using them to address an increasing number of complaints. Richard Branda, M.D., professor of medicine, and his research team looked at a segment of this market — patients undergoing chemotherapy for the treatment of breast cancer — to find out if nutritional supplements had any positive or negative effects. In a study published in the September 2004 issue of the journal Cancer, Branda and colleagues examined the results of a questionnaire that asked how 49 women with breast cancer used supplements. More than 70 percent of the women were taking at least one of 165 varieties of supplements during chemotherapy, which typically causes a decrease in neutrophils — white blood cells that help the body fight infection. The women who took multivitamins or vitamin E alone experienced a less-than-average decrease in neutrophils, whereas those who took the B vitamin folate had a larger-than-average reduction in neutrophils. According to Branda, consumers with and without cancer need to be cautious. The chemicals in nutritional supplements have an impact on how a person’s body processes drugs, including chemotherapy, as well as on how the cells in the body work. To better clarify which supplements are beneficial, Branda recommends further research.

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Tranmer Named Gross Professor of Neurosurgery Neurosurgeon Bruce Tranmer, M.D., professor of surgery at the College of Medicine, has been named the first Cordell E. Gross, M.D., Green and Gold Professor of Neurosurgery. Established in memory of former professor and chief of neurosurgery Cordell Gross, M.D., this endowed faculty position will provide annual support to Tranmer for educational or research purposes. Gross, who passed away in Bruce Tranmer, M.D. April 2000 and had been a mentor to Tranmer, was known as a superb surgeon, physician, and cerebral vascular researcher. He was appointed professor and chair of the division of neurosurgery in 1987 and three years later became director

of surgical research and vice chairman of the department of surgery. Tranmer, who also serves as Fletcher Allen chief of neurosurgery, joined the College of Medicine faculty in 1999. He received his medical degree from Queen’s University School of Medicine in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and served his surgical and neurosurgery residencies at Kingston General Hospital and the University of Toronto, respectively. After his residency, Tranmer joined the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Colorado, later moving to the University of Calgary and then to the Albany Medical College. In 1999 he was chosen to succeed Gross as chair of the division of neurosurgery. Tranmer, who also directs the neurosurgery residency program, specializes in cerebrovascular surgery, peripheral nerve surgery and spinal surgery. His research involves the study of cerebral vasospasm and smooth muscle cells in the brain.

Ice Scraper? What’s That? The College of Medicine attracts students from all over the country. While all of them know they are coming to a place that gets an average annual snowfall in excess of 90 inches, quite a few who hail from places where palm trees and cactus grow have never actually performed the ongoing experiment with frozen water and friction known to all Vermonters as winter driving. This is where Nate Orgain steps in. Or, more accurately, slides in. Since 2004, the secondyear medical student from South Strafford, Vt., Nate Orgain ’07 (right) schools What they get into with has taught “Winter Driving: The Basics,” a Californian Matt Schreiber ’07 Orgain runs from the basics — course for people from Florida and California in the art of skid recovery. some have never actually held an who have heard all the horror stories of interice scraper before — to hands-on, states turned into frictionless planes, and now need to white-knuckle practice in how to pull out of skids. (The develop their behind-the-wheel skills quickly. latter are held on parking lots and other spaces approved “It all started last year,” Orgain says, “when one of by the UVM Police.) Orgain also covers basic winter auto the Floridians in my class said they were worried about maintenance for students who may never before have getting around once winter set in. I’d been training had to buy snow tires or add anti-freeze to their radiators, ambulance and EMS drivers since 1996, so I felt I could and advises on important new items for the trunk like pretty easily present a class. I got help from my classjumper cables and shovels. mates Keith Robinson and Eric Rosenthal, and I put out “I get a lot of thank-you’s,” says Orgain. “People are an announcement and got an immediately positive eager to learn, and they’re easy to teach: by the time response. Some people really wondered what they were they get to me it’s a given that they’ve already done about to get into.” really well in physics.”

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TOP : GORDON MILLER / MEDICAL PHOTOGRAPHY ; BOTTOM : SALLY MCCAY

Public Health Projects Benefit Community Agencies Medical students and Dean Evans discuss their public health projects at the Jan. 19 gathering.

medical students, the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf is working to improve the health and well being of low-income homebound seniors and disabled adults,” says Sarah Barnett, administrative coordinator for the food shelf. Students who worked on the project included Wendy Neveu, Sara Pope, Whittney Dotzler, Allison Collen, Phuong Le, Brad Mackinnon, Adam Polifka, and S.E. Specter. A key component of students’ public health training at the UVM College of Medicine, Carney’s secondyear students work with local community agencies and apply the principles and science of public health to the needs in the community. Projects were conducted from September through December 2004. On Jan. 19, students displayed summaries of their projects at a poster session and community celebration in the College’s HSRF Gallery. —Jennifer Nachbur

We all do it. When food drives are on, we gather the usual canned goods, boxes of pasta and macaroni and cheese — items often high in fat, sodium, and sugar — and put them in the donation boxes without a thought about the downside of our good deeds. In early 2004, a number of homebound clients contacted the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf in Burlington to complain that they could not eat the food that the food shelf had delivered to them, due to specific nutritional requirements linked to their health conditions. After learning of the issue from the United Way of Chittenden County, Jan FOUNDATIONS IN PROGRESS Carney, M.D., research professor of medicine Both the classes of 2007 and 2008 passed curricular milestones this and associate dean for public health, seized the winter. On January 24, first-year students celebrate completion of the opportunity to link medical students and non“Human Structure & Function” component of the Foundations level of profit representatives to address this communithe Vermont Integrated Curriculum. On February 4, second-year stuty need. dents marked the end of their pioneering run of the Foundations level, Funded in part by Carney’s 2004 Comand announced the following awards to honor the faculty and staff munity-University and Service-Learning who helped them along the way: Planning and Implementation Grant for AMWA Gender Equity Award – The Silver Stethoscope (for the facService-Learning, this medical student public Paula Tracy, Ph.D. ulty member who had few lecture health project, one of 13 projects from Carney’s AMSA Golden Apple Award – hours, but made a substantial contrisecond year students, focused on the needs of Bruce Fonda bution) – John Lunde, M.D.’80 homebound clients of the food shelf's grocery Outstanding Foundations Course Above and Beyond (for the faculty delivery program. Each month, the program Award – Neural Science member, not necessarily a lecturer, delivers a five-day emergency supply of food to Foundations Course Director Award who went above and beyond the call low-income, homebound seniors and disabled – Cynthia Forehand, Ph.D. adults. Currently, the program delivers to 120 of duty to help the students in their Foundations Teaching Award – households in Chittenden County. Secondlearning objectives) – Masatoshi William Hopkins, M.D. Kida, M.D. year medical students analyzed the nutritional Foundations Integration Award (for Best Support Staff non-teaching (for needs of clients living with diabetes, heart disthe faculty member whose teaching the person who supported the class ease, and other illnesses, then checked labels best captured the spirit of the VIC) – and grocery store inventories to identify lowthe most in ways beside teaching) – Gerry Silverstein, Ph.D. Mike Cross. cost, healthy, non-perishable foods that suit these seniors’ needs. “With the help of Dr. Carney and the UVM GORDON MILLER / MEDICAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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Albertini Named University Scholar

Vermont Medical Society Honors College of Medicine Faculty Four members of the College of Medicine faculty were honored with awards at the 191st Annual Meeting of the Vermont Medical Society on October 23, 2004, at the Wyndham Hotel and Conference Center in Burlington. Award recipients included Mildred Reardon, M.D.’67, associate dean for primary care and clinical professor of medicine, who received the NEW PEDIATRICS TEXTBOOK UNVEILED A new major textbook coedited by Lewis First, M.D., professor and chair of pediatrics and senior associate dean for educational and curricular affairs, was unveiled at the American Academy of Pediatrics annual meeting in October. Published by Elsevier, the 2,080-page textbook titled Pediatrics provides a logical, “hands-on” approach to the care of the pediatric patient. Leading educators from around the country and hundreds of international pediatric subspecialists contributed to the book, which took almost seven years to complete. The book features 700 full-color illustrations, a “mini-index” at the end of each chapter, and an accompanying CD-ROM that has video sequences, images, and extra text information and references. A senior consulting editor of the journal Pediatrics, First is also co-editor-inchief of the American Academy of Pediatrics monthly newsletter AAP Grand Rounds.

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Mildred Reardon, M.D.’67, Founders’ Award

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Jerold Lucey, M.D., Distinguished Service Award

Founders’ Award; Jerold Lucey, M.D., professor of pediatrics, who received the Distinguished Service Award; Joseph Haddock, M.D., clinical associate professor of family medicine, who received the Physician of the Year Award; and Frederick Bagley, M.D., clinical associate professor of surgery, who received the Physician Award for Community Service.

Joseph Haddock, M.D., Physician of the Year Award

Frederick Bagley, M.D., Physician Award for Community Service

Richard Albertini, M.D., Ph.D., calls it “the interface.” It’s the sometimes uncomfortable place where medicine and theoretical science meet, and laboratory-bench techniques extend to patients’ bedsides. It’s also the mindset and approach that has defined Albertini’s career. Albertini, who retired in 2000 but continues at the College of Medicine as an emeritus professor of medicine and microbiology and molecular genetics and a research professor of pathology, is a University Scholar this academic year, one of UVM’s highest honors for sustained excellence in research or scholarship. His University Scholar Lecture, which he delivered in November, was titled

“Genetic Toxicology: Protecting the Genome.” The talk’s title is representative of Albertini’s outlook. The professor, who holds both medical and doctoral degrees, is driven by the idea of intervention. He and his team developed the world’s mostused field test for monitoring environmental gene damage. He remains active in collecting a store of data on environmental mutations, but what excites him most now, and was near the center of his lecture, is the newer work he and many others are doing in exploring ways to fix genetic damage. Medical genetics, he says, has evolved from a specialty primarily giving advice to parents of children with genetic disorders, to a field

developing ways to actually intervene and repair problems. As an emeritus, Albertini is still active in writing and research and advising graduate students. Beyond his passion for the work, he says he is motivated by a desire “to replicate people who will work on the interface,” who can transform the endless questions raised by research into answers that work for doctors and patients. — Kevin Foley

DANA MEDICAL LIBRARY OFFERS FREE ONLINE HEALTH EVALUATION TOOL Members of the University of Vermont, Fletcher Allen Health Care, and greater Burlington communities now have free access to a new online tool designed to help improve health. Called the Wellness Coupler, the web-based health care software program helps people evaluate health, lifestyle, and nutrition by asking a series of questions, then “coupling” the answers with an extensive database of medical information to provide specific, personalized advice on how to achieve a healthier future. Developed and licensed by Burlington-based PKC Corporation and available through the Vermont Cooperative Consumer Health Information Project, the program allows the user to work independently with guidance, then choose to either save the session for future use, print out a report, or send the results electronically to a health care provider. In addition to UVM’s Dana Medical Library, local libraries with access to the Wellness Coupler include the Fletcher Free Library in Burlington, the South Burlington Community Library, and the libraries offered through the College of Medicine’s Area Health Education Centers Program at the Community Health Center of Burlington and the Champlain Valley Area Health Education Center in St. Albans. To access the Wellness Coupler online, go to http://library.uvm.edu/dana/vthealth.

TOP : GORDON MILLER / MEDICAL PHOTOGRAPHY ; BOTTOM

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UVM AND FLETCHER ALLEN SPONSOR ECHO EXHIBIT ON AGING The College of Medicine, Elder Care Services at Fletcher Allen Health Care and the University of Vermont College of Medicine Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) Program jointly sponsored this fall 2004 exhibit at ECHO at the Leahy Center for Lake Champlain. Titled “The Amazing Feats of Aging,” the hands-on health science exhibit focused on the biology of aging, aging across the animal kingdom, healthy aging, and aging of the brain. The exhibit ran from September, 2004 to early January, 2005 and was visited by more than 24,000 people. Among the exhibit’s features were a computer program that aged a person’s face up to 25 years, a giant tortoise that never seemed to age, a puppet show that taught young visitors how animals take care of their elders, and a display on how normal brain aging differs from changes caused by Alzheimer’s disease.

TOP : GORDON MILLER / MEDICAL PHOTOGRAPHY ; BOTTOM

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White Coat 2005

(clockwise from left) Robert Hamill, M.D., speaks to students; the Class of 2008 recites the Declaration of Geneva; (above) Dean John N. Evans and Fletcher Allen CEO Melinda Estes, M.D., help students don their new coats.

The classic white doctor’s coat is a symbol of the completion of the first step in a long, challenging journey that includes four years of medical school, clinical residencies, and often subspecialty training. Among the many milestone events in a medical student’s career, receiving a white doctor’s coat is the first tangible affirmation of a goal that each student sets when they begin medical school. On Friday, January 14, the University of Vermont College of Medicine Class of 2008 participated in the White Coat Ceremony in Carpenter Auditorium at the Given Building on the UVM campus. Professor and Chair of Neurology Robert Hamill, M.D., spoke to the students, family, and friends of the College about the responsibilities that come with the beginning of clinical experience, and that continue on throughout a physician's career. Dr. Hamill’s remarks are excerpted here.

i truly am honored to join you, the Class of 2008, your families and friends and the faculty of the UVM academic medical center at the 2005 White Coat Ceremony. This ceremony is allegorical and emblematic. Allegorical because it sketches and portrays the values that personify “A Physician — A Doctor of Medicine.” Our profession is steeped in the fundamental sciences of human biology and function, and disease, and yet it requires the greatest of human skills: understanding and insight, and compassion and empathy. The white coat is emblematic because it signals the trust and respect of a profession that is truly a privilege. We welcome you, the Class of 2008, across

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the threshold to the roles, responsibilities, and rewards of clinical science and medicine. Medicine by definition is a patient-centered profession. The sophisticated technology and absolutely remarkable interventions that are now at the bedside are staggering and exciting. But at the nexus is the patient — the patient’s life and family: they are our mission, our raison d’être, a mission that cannot be lost. In this transition in medical education, biomedical science fuses with biobehavioral science, for by definition human disease occurs in human beings; and all disease and dysfunction affect the person within the patient. The response to illness may be more difficult than the GORDON MILLER / MEDICAL PHOTOGRAPHY

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illness itself. It is incumbent upon physicians as healers to surely appreciate, if not fully understand, the spirit and mind, as well as the body of the patient. In approaching the challenges of treating patients, four guideposts have served me well: 1. Time with your patient. If you have 30 minutes available, spend 20 minutes speaking with your patients, seven minutes in physical examination; and three minutes on all the laboratory and imaging tests. Doctors who are good listeners, and who thoughtfully seek information and probe for answers will bring correct answers to the bedside. In a time when technology may inappropriately drive the evaluation, almost overwhelming doctors and patients alike, calm, careful, and clear thinking will rectify the situation and clarify the diagnosis. Take the extra time. 2. Believe your patients. Patients know when they are sick. Patients know themselves better than we as physicians will ever know them. Believe the patient; believe the mother; believe the spouse. There are times when the altered mind will misperceive dysfunctions and patients will manifest symptoms that may obscure the diseased organ: i.e., somatization, anxiety and depression. Listen to your patients; if you listen carefully and long enough, they will tell you what is wrong. As doctors we have an uncanny knack for an odd transference of our own shortcomings to patients whose symptoms we cannot understand; i.e., their symptoms are too odd, they cannot be real. It is the uninformed and insensitive physician whose diagnosis is “not a real illness.” Do not fall into that trap — you and your patients will be the lesser. 3. Primum Non Nocere — First Do No Harm. This well-echoed aphorism is mentioned twice in the

Hippocratic Oath and identified in Epidemics [Book I, Section II Hippocrates]. Although we seek to help, our diagnostic approaches and interventions — be they medical or surgical — may have significant adverse consequences. This is especially true in the compromised host — a child, an older person, a chronically ill individual. Think carefully before you intercede. Sometimes the best treatment is no treatment, a decision cautiously arrived at knowing the natural history of disease, and knowing that time and supportive care will permit full recovery. 4. Communication. Just as normal nervous system functions hinge on neuronal communication within and among complicated neuronal networks, all of life is based on clear, concise, and meaningful communication. Doctors must be superb communicators. Your demeanor, your body language and affect — the many components of the so-called bedside manner — are the determinants of successful communication with patients. Yet I suspect that we may well fail in this domain of medicine more than in any other. The white coat is viewed, sometimes, as an obstacle to communication, because its presence may be intimidating or present a sense of detachment and authority; one not open to easy dialogue. Physicians tend to be very bright people, but may be remarkably insensitive to how they come across, how uncomfortable they may make others feel, including their patients, and may be unaware that they can appear aloof and uncaring. We can become overly impressed with ourselves and become somewhat of an arrogant lot. Such characteristics have no value. It is the doctor who wears the coat who may be the obstacle to communication, not the VM coat itself. S P R I N G

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ROLE When standardized patients portray illness, they help mold the performance of future physicians.

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jeffery lindholm

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im Court’s bare legs dangle off the side of the exam table. He adjusts the hospital gown, trying to cover his backside. Still, unlike most people in such a setting, he’s at ease. Though it is impossible to tell from his immediate surroundings, Court is not actually sitting in a hospital exam room. He’s in the UVM College of Medicine’s Professional Learning and Assessment Center in the Given Building. That’s because he’s not a regular patient; he’s a standardized patient (SP). The College has about 70 other people like him, young and old, male and female, who have been trained as part of the implementation of the Vermont Integrated Curriculum to teach medical students what can’t be learned from a textbook — physical exam and communication skills — or to portray a variety of patient roles targeted to curricular objectives in learning or testing situations. In a few short minutes, Court is surrounded by four first-year medical students and Associate Professor of Family Medicine John Saia, M.D.’66. The students are practicing for an upcoming evaluation of their newly-learned physical exam skills. When it comes time for Sara Delaporta to take his blood pressure, Court shows how to locate his brachial artery, helps her get the cuff adjusted and winces when she pumps the cuff too tight. When she’s looking into his ear, he shows her how to pull his ear back to get a straight-on view to the eardrum. “I like to see lights go on for the students,” says Cate Nicholas, M.S., P.A., director of the College’s Standardized Patient Program. “It’s great when they see the ear canal and the eardrum through an otoscope for the first time, and the SP’s feedback lets them know that they know how to do it.” “SPs have been pretty much part of my curriculum at UVM from day one,” says fourth-year medical student Sarah Hallen. “The first part of orientation, we saw a presentation of how to do a physical on an SP.”

IN THE BEGINNING

In the mid-1990s, the SP program evolved from the example of gynecology teaching associates, women

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at several institutions in the U.S. who volunteered to help teach pelvic exam skills to second- and thirdyear medical students. “These women were part of a national trend. They volunteered to teach about issues using their own bodies,” says Nicholas. “They provided comfort and safety for the students.” To assist in more general learning, standardized patients were added to the Introduction to Physical Examination course for first-year students in the mid-90s. Later in the decade, the Department of Family Practice added a practical assessment using SPs to the end of the third-year clerkship period. This was UVM’s first OSCE, or Observed Standardized Clinical Encounter. Today, SP OSCEs are used throughout the four years of medical curriculum as practical assessment tools. In addition to working with medical students, standardized patients provide similar services for medical residents as well as nurse practitioner and physical therapy students. They also assist in continuing medical education programs for clinicians and faculty. In 2002, with funding secured by Sen. Patrick Leahy, the College created the Assessment Center — the stage, if you will, for the SP performance — in the Given Building. The Center has a dozen

Above, SP Cliff Don discusses reflexes with Lari Young’06; at left, Associate Professor David Little, M.D.’75, works with SP Jim Court.

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A Patient Family

Clockwise from left: David Little, M.D.’75, chats with SP’s Vivan Jordan and Priscilla Baker during a break; SP program director Cate Nicholas observes several student–SP interactions in the Assessment Center; SP Bob Boyland is examined. exam rooms, a life-size patient simulation robot, a bank of video monitors, four computer stations, and a patient waiting area. FIRST YEARS , FIRST SKILLS

“Doctoring skills is the term we use for the skills of learning to talk with patients, perform exams and organize data in a medical way that other professionals can understand,” says Alan Rubin, M.D., codirector of the Doctoring Skills class. “That involves translating a patient’s story and knowing how to document and communicate with others in the field.” The Doctoring Skills classes are imbedded within a course called Human Structure and Function, a 12-week course that combines gross anatomy, histology, embryology, and physiology with an intro-

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duction to medical imaging and doctoring skills to present an integrated overview of the human body. Each week, students working in small groups with SPs and faculty are introduced to a body system. The students learn how to inquire about issues that may arise for patients, perform the physical exam required to evaluate that system, and how to turn a patient story into a medical note.

both diagnoses and treatment plans. That’s where the SPs’ acting skills come in. For example, if a class includes a small group discussion on how to do motivational interviewing to convince someone to stop smoking or lose weight, the students will move from the rhetorical discussion to the practical hands-on with an SP. The SP will react as a real patient and realistically give the student a hard time. “One of the big things we work with through standardized patients is communication,” says Nicholas. “As a doctor you can know anatomy backward and forward, but you have to be able to communicate with the patient to put that knowledge into action.” WHYS AND WHEREFORES OF SPS

ROLE PLAYING AND CLINICAL SKILLS

In the first year, students learn how to do all the parts of a head-to-toe physical exam and how to act like a professional when working with patients. The standardized patient is both a body to practice on and a teacher of physical and interpersonal skills. Starting in the second year, emphasis is on disease presentation and the students’ skills in forming

“The people who work as standardized patients are interested in both health care and self care,” says Nicholas. “Also, they want to make sure that when they need docs in their older years, the docs will be well trained.” SPs have to study, too. Nicholas and other faculty members work with them to help them learn both the exam skills in which they will train students

Angele Court got the bug first. She picked it up from her friend, Sally. Then it spread to Angele’s husband, Jim. Before long, she’d passed it on to the couple’s daughter, Hannah, too. And that’s how the Courts became UVM’s first family of standardized patients “Sally was doing it about three years ago,” Angele says. “She told me, it’s kind of fun, you get to act. We both like films so I said, cool.” The Court Jim started in February 1994. Then Angele and family — Hannah worked together when program direc- Hannah, tor Cate Nicholas needed a mother/daughter Angele, team for a continuing education session in psy- and Jim. chiatric medicine for doctors. Angele portrayed a pushy mother who was stressing out her daughter in a quest for excellence. Angele has also portrayed an alcoholic patient as well as an abused woman. In the latter case, her character comes in with a headache, which she has because “my husband winds me around the house a lot,” Angele explains. “I’ve had broken bones and there are clues there, but if the students don’t ask the right questions, they’re not going to get it.” “I can’t watch her do that for more than two minutes,” says Hannah. “It’s so intense. It scares me.” The Courts all have to find time for their standardized patient work. Both of the parents work full time. Jim is a certified dental technician, and Angele works full time in a law office. Both have flexibility as far as making up time spent at UVM, but they do sometimes have to take vacation days to do this work. Hannah is a junior at Burlington High School, and her mother says she “has to maintain a good grade average or she wouldn’t be eligible.” The family invests a lot of time in SP work, but they’ve also found a good use for the modest amount of money they make as standardized patients: vacations. In 1993, Angele and Jim took a cruise; last Thanksgiving, the three Courts went to visit Hannah’s grown sister, who lives in Ireland. “It’s great to know the students and have a chance to work with them,” says Jim. “And I learn, too. I am invested not only in their education but also my own.”

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and the background that will let them convincingly portray various patients and their illnesses. “I’m an adult learner,” says SP Angele Court, Jim’s wife (see sidebar on p. 17). “Having to study the textbook and know certain systems is really energizing. Sometimes I think the last thing I need after a long day is to read 100 pages of text, but you know, it is great to learn new things. It keeps your mind going and sharp.” For portrayals, SPs get a written “script” that includes background on their roles and what symptoms they’ll be presenting with. They also get readings about the conditions. Before they see students, they rehearse their roles with Nicholas and faculty members in that area of medicine. Once they’ve got it down, they meet students in the Assessment Center for a dry run before their debut. All along the way, their acting is honed. “The SPs do an incredible job of

acting out the situations,” says second-year student Justin Sanders. “They’ll get to the end and everyone’s thinking, ‘Wow, that was really an excellent performance.’ It’s an important part of our learning for them to get it right.”

From left: Cliff Dow, Angele and Jim Court do paperwork and chat during downtime; SP Deb Brown; SP Jae Vick and medical students in a teen sexuality interview.

STANDARDIZING THE SPS

profile of a good SP It takes a special person to be a standardized patient. • Flexible schedule — SPs are part-time temporary employees of UVM. Some SPs work regularly in classroom situations; others only during testing periods. • Ease with people — Not only do SPs teach, Cate Nicholas with they also have to give feedback and make her “casting” book assessments. • Comfort with one’s body — SPs not only have of SPs. to let students poke at them, they have to let them see them in an exam gown. • Able to be on stage — SPs have to have a little bit of ham, the ability to step out into a role convincingly and sometimes to play that role over and over again all in one day. • Good memory — SPs need to remember the script they’ve been given and also keep track of the student’s performance to critique. If you think you’ve got something to offer as a standardized patient, contact program director Cate Nicholas at [email protected].

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Standardization of both presentation and assessment is, of course, a very important aspect of this teaching method. For evaluation purposes, each student needs to see the same patient problem presented in the same format. This guarantees fair assessment and also allows students and faculty to compare and contrast student competence. Nicholas and faculty members develop checklists for communication skills, professional skills and physical exam skills. SPs fill out checklists after they meet with a student, and then provide immediate feedback. Nicholas works on the checklists the SPs use to evaluate student performance with Director of Assessment Karen Richardson-Nassif, Ph.D. All standardized patients for all students use the same checklist. And the checklists undergo regular evaluation. “We do a statistical analysis on every item on the checklist to just make sure that we are teaching it well,” says Richardson-Nassif. “We look for

red flags if a group of students are missing an item: is it because we aren’t teaching it well; is it because the standardized patient is not really following through on their end; or is it because the students just didn’t get it?” That information is then fed back to the course directors and to Nicholas, who can fine tune presentations to be more effective teaching tools, often within a few days. STANDARDIZED PATIENTS GO NATIONWIDE

The National Board of Medical Examiners now requires students to undergo a national exam which uses standardized patients as part of the process of receiving state licensure. This is being done at the request of state licensing boards, who along with the national Board of Medical Examiners and all medical schools have the obligation to protect the public as they train physicians and SPs. Lewis First, M.D., professor and chair of pediatrics, and senior associate dean for educational and curricular affairs, currently serves as committee chair for Step 2 of the United States Medical Licensing Exam. In this capacity, he and his committee have been responsible for helping the nation-

al board design, implement and evaluate the national SP licensing exam, which was first offered in June 2004 and now complements the traditional exam. All U.S. medical students now must pass this exam to receive a state license to practice medicine. “I have had the opportunity to recognize not just on our campus but nationally the important role SPs play in the training and subsequent licensure of physicians,” First says. “Our standardized patients turn the theory into practice. You can read about baseball, but you need to pick up a bat and ball to really understand how the game is played. This is a good analogy as to why we are using SPs so frequently in our new curriculum. The SPs allow the students themselves to actively step up to bat and practice the clinical skills and knowledge they’ve learned in the classroom and then be given direct feedback through observation by SPs and faculty that they’ve successfully mastered these learning objectives.” “I’m extremely proud of the work our SPs have done under Cate’s leadership,” First says. “I think the program is one of the unique attributes that makes our integrated curriculum such an innovative and yet effective way to train physicians for the VM future.” S P R I N G

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For orthopaedic researcher Bruce Beynnon, Ph.D., it’s a search for all the gain, without the pain.

Easing the t

Strain

he image of three uvm hockey players

by jon

reidel

of the 1970s wearing casts from ankle to hip remains with Bruce Beynnon, Ph.D. As captain of the 1978-79 UVM men’s basketball team, he remembers wondering how such strong, fit athletes could so suddenly have their careers ended by a knee injury. Now an associate professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation, Beynnon says the anterior cruciate ligament injuries of Garry Hebert, Chris Coutu and Serge Leblanc, as well as fellow basketball player Charlie Trapani, played a role in his early interest with knee injuries, and with his subsequent decision to pursue a career that has made him a leading researcher of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries and the surgical and rehabilitation techniques used to treat them.

photography by

sabin gratz 21

“It wasn’t like I saw these injuries and decided to “Our finding of different intrinsic risk factors for dedicate my life to studying the ACL gods, but it ankle ligament injury between males and females really stuck in my mind,” Beynnon says. “These indicates that intervention studies designed to guys were super athletes — one of them was Mr. reduce the incidence of ankle injuries need to develMontreal, but an injury ended his hockey career op different strategies for males and females,” that day. It’s been interesting to see how an injury Beynnon wrote. that was career-ending at any level back in the 70s is now treatable to where an athlete can return within THINKING ABOUT REHAB the same year. Back then, from the knee’s perspec- Much of Beynnon’s research has focused on clinical tive, the surgery was worse than the injury. The studies designed to evaluate different ACL surgical knee probably didn’t know the difference between techniques and rehabilitation with an emphasis on an axe attack and the surgery.” the long-term stability of the knee and return to full Since then, Beynnon, director of research in the activity; examination of how changes in the design Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation, of total joint components can influence their behavand a team of College of Medicine researchers have ior; and the influence of abnormal joint loads on the built an international reputation and published initiation and progression of osteoarthritis. When Beynnon first started working at UVM, extensively on sports injuries and rehabilitation. A pair of new studies — one on the effectiveness of the institution where he earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering in 1982, followed by ACL rehab programs and another an M.S. and Ph.D in biomechanical study focusing on the effect of extrin- Beynnon at the controls of sic and intrinsic risk factors on first- the Biodex which measures and mechanical engineering, he focused his attention on the biometime inversion ankle ligament injuries torque, muscle strength (continued on page 24) in high school and college athletes — and speed. are expected to be published later this year. The latter study evaluated ankle injuries among 901 local prep and collegiate athletes who logged a total of 50,680 “person-days” of exposure to soccer, basketball, lacrosse or field hockey over four years. Only 43 athletes had sprained ankles during the study period, even though sprains are typically considered one of the most common injuries among athletes. Beynnon’s team also looked at the how injury rates are affected by factors such as gender, level of competition and sport. What they found was that the incident rate of inversion injury is less than 1 percent per 1,000 days of exposure to sport, a value lower than previously reported. Interestingly, risk among female athletes can be linked to specific sports. The study shows that risk is highest among females playing basketball, who are at significantly greater risk than male basketball players and female lacrosse players.

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getting hard data on knee rehabilitation When word reached Bruce Beynnon, Ph.D., in December that he and his team of fellow researchers had won the prestigious O’Donoghue Sports Injury Research Award for 2005 from the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine, it was a familiar feeling for the orthopaedic researcher. Papers authored or coauthored by Beynnon had won the O’Donoghue Award twice before, in 1996 and 1999. The most recent paper, “Rehabilitation of the Knee Following Anterior Cruciate Ligament [ACL] Reconstruction with a Bone-Patellar Tendon-Bone Graft,” was written by Beynnon and his UVM colleagues Robert Johnson, M.D., Bjarne Brattbakk, Joseph Abate, M.D., Braden Fleming, Ph.D., and Claude Nichols, M.D., the chair of the Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation. It focuses on a major question in orthopaedics today — should patients who have undergone ACL reconstruction have their knee immobilized for a period of time after surgery, or begin immediate rehabilitation? It is a subject of increasing concern, with ACL injuries on the rise. “Improvements in ski boots, for example, have had an unforeseen part in the increase in ACL problems,” says Beynnon. “What used to be the dominant ski injury, the tibial fracture, has been mostly eliminated. But the force is now transmitted further up the leg — we’ve moved the problem up to the knees.” Two decades ago, rehabilitation after an ACL reconstruction almost always included immobilization of the patient’s leg for six weeks or longer immediately after surgery. Research on animal models showed that immobilization itself caused adverse effects on knee joints, and some studies showed early mobilization, including walking, might be possible for ACL patients without endangering the healing of their newly-grafted ligaments. It appeared that the most beneficial course for many patients with ACL repairs could be immediate, vigorous rehab. “What was missing,” explains Beynnon, “was hard, factual information. A lot of orthopaedic research has been retrospective. This was one of the first studies on this topic derived from a randomized, controlled, double-blinded study.”

The award-winning study started with 390 candidates who had had an ACL tear between December 1998 and May 2001. Ultimately, 208 subjects were accepted into the study (those excluded were done so on the basis of age restrictions, pregnancy, or earlier or simultaneous additional injuries). Forty-two of the subject group consented to participate, and were randomly placed into either accelerated or non-accelerated rehabilitation treatments immediately after their ACL repair surgery. All the participants in the process — the patient, the surgeon, and the individual making follow-up measurements, were “blinded” in the randomization procedure. Patients who were placed in the non-accelerated group underwent a slower, 32-week program of rehab. Those in the accelerated group immediately began a 19-week program. Follow-up exams were done on the subjects immediately after the reconstruction, and at intervals of three, six, twelve, and 24 months thereafter. Throughout the study, patients were examined for knee laxity, knee function and activity, thigh muscle strength, knee proprioception (the patient’s awareness of joint movement and other factors), and patient satisfaction. Much of the data in the study was gathered using tools and techniques developed by Beynnon and his team. One of these was the use of “marker beads” made of tantalum, which were implanted into bone and used as landmarks to accurately gauge knee laxity on x-ray radiographs. “One of the problems with measuring this is that it had been inherently imprecise in the past,” says Beynnon. The beads give solid, immovable reference points for gathering precise data on movement. The UVM team also developed a device for measuring proprioception, in which a subject sits in a padded chair and is deprived of many of the usual visual and other sense clues that can cloud their innate ability to gauge the movement of their joints . Interesting as these techniques may be, they are not, ultimately, the most gratifying elements of the study to Beynnon. “The most important thing is changing the way patients are treated,” he says. “Our past research has helped change many things — the way braces are used, for example. To me, research becomes most meaningful when you can translate it to the bedside.” — Edward Neuert

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chanics of the ACL with the intention of finding better ways of reconstructing it. Beynnon and his colleagues eventually developed techniques to measure the biomechanics of the ACL. This lead to the study of the strain biomechanics of ligaments in people doing all types of rehab exercises like weight lifting, biking and stair climbing. “That served as a database for us to develop criteria by which to reconstruct and then later rehabilitate people. To make the link we were able to characterize normal strain biomechanics — we could rank order the exercises from highest strain to lowest strain. So now we can take a group of exercises Bjarne Brattbakk, that we know produces Clinical Coordinator, and the RSA Knee low strain (non-accelerLaxity System built by ated rehab exercises) and Beynnon and his team. another group that pro-

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duces high strain, and develop programs that would compare the two and their effect (on ACL rehab).” This research is the basis for a paper that will appear in the American Journal of Sports Medicine authored by Beynnon, Robert Johnson, M.D., Bjarne Brattbakk, Joseph Abate, M.D., Braden Fleming, Ph.D., and Claude Nichols, M.D., all colleagues in Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation (except for Fleming, who has left the department). Despite

the Beynnon file Bruce Beynnon, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitaion Director of Research, Department of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation

EDUCATION PhD: Biomechanical and Mechanical Engineering, University of Vermont, 1991 MS: Biomechanical and Mechanical Engineering, University of Vermont, 1986 BS: Mechanical Engineering, University of Vermont, 1982 • Joined College of Medicine faculty in 1986. • Member of the editorial boards of The Journal of Orthopaedic Research, The American Journal of Sport Medicine, and The Journal of Knee Surgery. Contributor to a number of journals focused on the spine, shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle disorders. • Research has focused on adult reconstruction, sports trauma, fracture fixation, and has included the development of a spine implant (Vermont Spinal Fixator), a cervical thoracic orthosis for the management of cervical spine lesions, and more recently, the development of a new internal fixation plate for the treatment of joint deformities. • Developed instrumentation to investigate the biomechanical behavior of total knee arthroplasty, which led to an improved understanding of how changes in the design of total joint components can influence their biomechanical behavior. • Currently working on several sports biomechanics projects at the University of Vermont’s Sports Medicine Center, including the development and

validation of new arthrometers to quantify knee and shoulder biomechanics in-vivo, the measurement of anterior cruciate ligament strain in-vivo. • Leading clinical studies designed to evaluate different anterior cruciate ligament surgical techniques and rehabilitation programs with particular concern on the long-term stability of the knee and return to full activity. • Recently focused on identifying the risk factors that predispose athletes to lower extremity injuries such as knee and ankle ligament sprains. An additional research interest is the influence of abnormal joint loads on the initiation and progression of osteoarthritis. • Recipient of the 1988 Young Scientist Award from the American Society of Biomechanics; North American Arthroscopy Association’s O’Connor Arthroscopic Research Award 1989; SICOT M.E. Muller Research Award 1990; Albert Trillat Award of the International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine in 1993 and 1997; American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Kappa Delta Award in 1994; O’Donoghue Sports Injury Research Award of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine in 1996, 1999 and 2005; GOTS-Beiersdorf Research Award 2000; and the 2002 American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Frank Stinchfield Award.

the findings not being exactly what he expected, Beynnon says the results are significant in that they go against some commonly held beliefs about aggressive rehab versus non-aggressive. “What we found is that there was no difference between the programs, which is quite interesting because we thought there would be,” Beynnon says. “There’s no difference from a clinical outcome, from the patients’ perspective, from a functional perspective, or from a strength perspective.” With this study complete, Beynnon and his colleagues have already begun to advance their research by conducting laboratory studies on syn-

ovial fluids drawn from the knees of subjects, which will provide information about protein biomarkers that may be responsible for cartilage breakdown. “This is very interesting because we’re looking at arthritis before it even happens,” Beynnon says. “If we can understand what’s going on before, maybe we can intervene before it starts. We can target certain things earlier. Do we need to block the degradation process that’s cleaving the cartilage, and if so how do we do that? What we’ve identified is that cartilage breaking itself down much, much faster than it should be, so we’re starting to look at VM ways to bring that back into balance.” S P R I N G

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WALKING the

Tightrope For Keiji Fukuda, MD ’83, being one of the leaders of the fight against influenza means balancing the quiet work of science and the occasional loud warning call.

A

by melissa

pasanen

fter keiji fukuda, m.d.’83 was featured last winter in a New York Times Magazine cover story about the increase of avian flu in humans and the likelihood that

it heralds the next flu pandemic, he wrote the reporter a short note. Press attention is not new to Fukuda, who has been team leader of the influenza branch of the epidemiology unit at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for almost nine years, but the unusually personal and flattering portrait painted by reporter Gretchen Reynolds made him a little uncomfortable.

photograph by george duncan, courtesy of Peter Hay Fine Art 26

“I sent Gretchen an email, and said, ‘You made us look much better than we really are — but thank you,’” says Fukuda. He accepts that this sort of exposure is part of his job, that he has a role to play in helping communicate the fact that a pandemic caused by a new, deadly flu strain is “inevitable,” as he was quoted saying in USA Today last March. He is, however, concerned that people may not understand that managing the threat of influenza is a group effort, not the work of a few intrepid gumshoe epidemiologists. “There’s a team of 70 to

“ No matter how you play the politics, no matter how glossy the images, it’s really

biology, the science. It’s what those viruses

about the

”

are doing that counts.

80 people who work on influenza at the CDC,” Fukuda says, “and even beyond that, across the world, a vast number of people who will remain faceless and nameless and who truly are absolutely critical.” Fukuda knows he also needs to tread a fine line when he warns of impending flu outbreaks. “You have to be a little careful about crying wolf, or crying Y2K,” he says, “and not trumpeting too much that’s still theoretical while trumpeting enough so that what needs to be done gets done. It’s a bit of a tightrope walk.” He credits a variety of recent events with elevating flu’s profile: the avian flu outbreaks in Asia; the outbreaks of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS); heightened awareness of bioterrorism, which focuses “popular attention on Andromeda

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Strain-types of nightmare scenarios into which pandemic flu fits very nicely;” and several recent books that re-examine the 1918 flu pandemic. While others might bask in the spotlight, it is no surprise to those who know Fukuda that he is somewhat reluctant about being the center of attention. “He’s an extremely modest person,” says his younger brother, Christopher Fukuda, M.D.’85, who practices urology in Colchester, Vt., and is a clinical assistant professor at the College of Medicine. “When he was in Time magazine a few years ago my wife had the article framed and gave it to him, but it never made it onto the wall.” Even during their childhood growing up in Barre, Vt., his brother reports that Keiji always downplayed his accomplishments, which included numerous athletic awards. “He came home with a winning jacket one time and he gave it to me,” recalls Christopher. “I wore it for a long time.” The brothers, who also have an older sister who now lives in Los Angeles, are sixth-generation physicians whose father came from Japan to Vermont to do an anesthesia fellowship with John Abajian, Jr., M.D., in Burlington, and then spent his career working at the Barre hospital. Their mother trained as a general physician. “I loved growing up in Vermont,” Fukuda says, although he acknowledges, “When you grow up in a place where you are in the minority, it really does push you to think a lot about race and who you are.” At the urging of a favorite high school teacher, Fukuda went to Oberlin College in Ohio, where he fell in love with the cello and hoped to become a filmmaker. After his sophomore year, he spent nine months backpacking across Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe. “It made me realize that I loved traveling, I loved being overseas, and I did not want to be a tourist or a voyeur. I wanted to actually do something.” He admits that he resisted following in the family footsteps, but he finally decided that medicine was his best option. Once Fukuda made that decision, the choice of the College of Medicine was clear. In addition to financial considerations and the fact that he wanted to return to Vermont, “The school itself just seemed right for me,” he says. “It has a really humanistic approach to medicine and also in its approach to medical education. It’s not gigantic and not too small. There’s just something human-sized and human-voiced about the education there.”

Associate Research Professor Alan Rubin, M.D., was the group leader for Fukuda’s section of the “Physician in Society” class, and Fukuda remains good friends with the Rubin family. “He was curious, humorful, and wry,” Rubin recalls, “and he was an amazing self-starter. He just knew what he wanted to do.” He also loved music and food, Rubin adds. “He cooked a dish my kids still remember. We called it ‘hairy chicken,’ which had something to do with the feathers he left in the chicken.” Rubin is not surprised to see his former student perform a critical and highly visible professional role with such aplomb. “He always hesitates before he speaks,” Rubin says, “but when he does, it’s perfect.” Between his second and third year of medical school, Fukuda spent six Keiji Fukuda, M.D.’83 groups. Fukuda did not match with the months overseas working for a small at the Centers for malaria group as he had hoped. “Instead I health and welfare organization that Disease Control matched with the retrovirus diseases provided services to indigenous tribes and Prevention in group — in retrospect, one of the more in the Tamilnadu region of South Atlanta. fortuitous things that ever happened to India. “That was one of the greatest me,” he adds, citing enduring relationthings I ever did,” he says. “It’s an ships with his supervisors. Although he unbelievably beautiful area up in the mountains — was officially working on HTLV1 and 2 viruses, one one of the major tea-growing areas with both jungle of the highlights of his training was an unrelated and desert and wild monkeys and elephants.” His assignment in which he was sent alone to time in India confirmed Fukuda’s interest in inter- Rarotonga, one of the Cook Islands in the South national medicine: “Travel really made me think Pacific, for five weeks to investigate a Dengue fever that there are some problems that are almost outbreak. After learning as much as he could about intractable and almost impossible to figure out. I Dengue and mosquitoes, Fukuda piled himself and wanted to work on problems like malaria.” After his equipment onto a plane. When he arrived at Fukuda completed his internal medicine residency “the most beautiful tropical island I’ve ever been and a chief year at Mount Zion Hospital in San to,” it turned out that communication was so costly Francisco, he earned a Masters in Public Health in he could only make a couple of calls. “It really epidemiology at University of California, Berkeley pushed me to think about what I was doing there and then spent a year working in leprosy and tuber- and what I was trying to figure out,” he says. culosis clinics in the San Francisco Bay area. “Then “Although it sounds funny to say, it was just a wonI began asking people, ‘If one wanted to work on derful experience — the kind of thing you dream malaria, what should one do?’” Fukuda recalls. about as an EIS trainee.” “And everyone said, ‘You really need to go to the After finishing the training program, Fukuda EIS [Epidemiology Intelligence Service] training became a full CDC officer with the Viral program.’” Exanthems and Herpesviruses Branch. This group The two-year EIS officer training program at the is also responsible for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Centers for Disease Control and Prevention starts (CFS) because of early thinking that it could be with a month-long introductory session and then a related to chronic viral infections such as Epsteinmatch between the new trainees and the different Barr. He credits his work in this group with allowCOURTESY CDC

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ing him to develop deeper insights into the broader context of disease. “Culturally, CFS occupies this unusual niche,” Fukuda observes. “On the one hand you have this very passionate group of people who believe strongly that it’s a syndrome that exists as a discreet disease. On the other hand, you have a great deal of skepticism by much of the medical establishment…It’s a very polarizing field and it’s a very polarizing illness.” Working with CFS, “taught me both about the political aspects of these sorts of issues as public health problems,” Fukuda says, “but also it really pushed me and taught me a lot about epidemiology since it is a syndrome in which there aren’t clear biological markers. How do you actually study something like that? How do you define it? How do you approach it in a way that most people will find acceptable? How do you conduct studies in an area like that which are scientifically defensible? It also made me think a lot about the cultural, medical, and social biases about being ill.” In 1996, Fukuda was approached by the influenza group to become their epidemiology section chief, an opportunity to “shape a fairly small team and establish a direction,” he says. It also bore some similarities to the infectious disease that had first intrigued him. Like malaria, Fukuda says, “It was really not apparent to me how one could ever address something like influenza in terms of how to control it and prevent it.” Plus, he adds, the response to flu at the time was similar to CFS: “Back then it really was under the radar screen. Most people thought of it as just another severe cold…and that really galled me.” Flu no longer flies under the radar but, at times, that might be helpful for Fukuda and his colleagues. From vaccine shortages to avian flu, the subject now grabs frequent headlines. Fukuda traveled to Hong Kong, China, and Vietnam in 1997, 1999, and 2004 to try to understand the behavior of various strains of avian flu and he was also called in to help with the SARS investigations in Hong Kong and China in 2003. He travels widely to attend public health conferences, and is in great demand as a lecturer. While Fukuda is pleased that people now recognize the serious nature of a potential flu pandemic, he is troubled about the intensity focused on every piece of news about the flu and how that attention can compromise global health security. “There has always been this triangle where politics and media

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communications and science mix together,” Fukuda says, “but a lot of the tools which have helped us do science much better, like computers, have also made media communications a minute-by-minute activity around the clock.” Greater media scrutiny has led to increased pressure on countries as they struggle to balance public health concerns with potential economic and political damage. Fukuda raises the recent H5N1 avian flu outbreaks across Asia as an example. “We got message after message saying this is not an epizootic problem [a disease that attacks many animals in the same general area],” Fukuda says with just a hint of frustration in his voice. By the time governments publicly acknowledged the health risk and killed millions of chickens, over 20 people had died and a potential pandemic spark had smoldered for longer than Fukuda felt necessary. “The balance between politics and media and science in many of our estimations is really beginning to become upset, so that many of the scientific considerations are getting less and less time at the table,” Fukuda says. “That, for me, is worrying. No matter how you play the politics, no matter how glossy the images, it’s really about the biology, the science. It’s what those viruses are doing that counts.” “In the end though,” Fukuda says, “what was and still remains the most interesting to me in being at a place like CDC is that if the question is how do you address public health problems, then the answer is a combination of science, politics, communications, and common sense.” He tries to maintain balance in his own perspective as well, by making time to play music with his two daughters, walk the family dog, and cook up big sushi dinners with his wife in their Atlanta home. Fukuda also spends two weeks every fall on the wards in San Francisco. Public health can easily become just “numbers and concepts and video images on computers,” Fukuda cautions, “but when you go back to the wards — particularly when you go back to the wards at some place like San Francisco General where such a high percentage of the patient population is either homeless, or HIVinfected, or has a substance abuse problem, or some combination — it just drives home to you that this is what disease means, this is what poverty means, this is what having no hope means. It makes what we deal with in a somewhat abstract fashion in pubVM lic health, it makes it very concrete.”

HALL A P R E S I D E N T C L A S S

’

S

C O R N E R

N O T E S

D E V E L O P M E N T

N E W S

O B I T U A R I E S

3 3 3 4

2 3 5 2

In 1905, when the College of Medicine completed its third home at the corner of Prospect and Pearl Streets in Burlington, the main lecture room, where students spent so much of their time, was named Hall A. The Hall A magazine section seeks to be a meeting place for all former students of the College of Medicine.

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M.D. CLASS NOTES

PRESIDENT ’S CORNER H A L L A

UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT COLLEGE OF MEDICINE DEVELOPMENT & ALUMNI RELATIONS OFFICE ASSISTANT DEAN

rick blount In 1965, my wife Edie and I moved into a one-bedroom apartment in a home owned by the Wiedman family at 69 North Prospect Street, just a few hundred yards from the College of Medicine, which was then located at the corner of Prospect Street and Colchester Avenue. After commuting 35 miles each way every day to Boston as an undergraduate, being able to walk to school was a welcome change. For the next year, the College’s famous fourth floor, and Hall A, became a home away from home. Today, the memory of Hall A seems to have become nostalgically aggrandized in my mind. I have always been amazed at how the passage of time transforms our memories, automatically filtering away difficult, less happy and forgettable experiences, while simultaneously enhancing those portions of remembrance which brought forth satisfaction, fellowship, understanding and direction in life. So it is with the amazingly steep steps of old Hall A, which were the cause of countless backaches where we sat for 1,000 hours of lectures in Anatomy class, comforted only by the constant reminders of how unfortunate we were to be deprived of the 10,000 hours taught to Dr. Stultz when he was young. (When he was young, surely, dinosaurs had still roamed the earth.) Now Hall A is only steep(ed) in tradition and fond memories. Today, the classrooms of the College are no longer Vermont’s leading cause of acrophobia. The medical campus today comprises wonderfully designed modern buildings brought to fruition by visionary leaders such as our own Dean Evans. The newest facility, the Medical Education Center, is scheduled to open this fall, and will offer the latest computerized educational tools in an environment designed to promote and enhance the integrated learning of basic science and clinical skills. Some may see the opening of the new Medical Education Center as a completion. It is not. Rather, it is another milestone which, when complemented by the College’s stellar faculty, will keep our College of Medicine in the vanguard of all medical schools. I am grateful to say that these new spaces will bear the names of some of our fellow alumni — as well as other supporters of the College — in recognition of generous gifts to support the programs going on inside these walls. Many naming opportunities still remain for rooms within the center. The Medical Alumni Association (MAA) is proud to promote this process of improvement, whether by change or growth or both. To help ensure open communication and a constant flow of information about the many exciting developments occurring frequently at the College of Medicine, the MAA has begun a series of communications to parents and families of medical students and graduate alumni. Improvements have been made to the MAA webpage (http://alumni.uvm.edu/com) and a new Graduate Alumni Webpage has launched (http://alumni.uvm.edu/com/phd.asp). And for the first time, the MAA has created a new award designed to recognize outstanding Graduate Alumni contributions. Stay tuned, and stay in touch! Charles Howard, M.D.’69

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DEVELOPMENT OPERATIONS MANAGER

ginger lubkowitz DIRECTOR , MAJOR GIFTS

manon o ’ connor

DIRECTOR , MEDICAL ANNUAL GIVING

sarah keblin

DIRECTOR , MEDICAL ALUMNI RELATIONS

Class agents are listed at the beginning of each year’s notes. If you have news to share, please contact your class agent or the alumni office at [email protected] or (802) 656-4014.

1941

1946

John S. Poczabut 62 Doral Farm Road Stamford, CT 06902 (203) 322-3343

Frederick C. Barrett Crossroads Place, Apt. 238 1 Beechwood Drive Waterford, CT 06385 (860) 326-2156

1943

J. Bishop McGill 152 Sanborn Road Stowe, VT 05672 (802) 253-4081 [email protected]

kelli shonter

DEVELOPMENT OFFICER

erin douglas ASSISTANTS

jane aspinall lisa denton elyzabeth massucci

UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT MEDICAL ALUMNI ASSOCIATION ALUMNI EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

2004–2005 OFFICERS ( TWO -YEAR TERMS ) PRESIDENT

charles b. howard, m.d. ’ 69 (2004-2006)

PRESIDENT- ELECT

marvin a. nierenberg, m.d. ’60 (2004-2006) TREASURER

patricia fenn, m.d. ’65 (2004-2006) SECRETARY

ruth a. seeler, m.d. ’62

Francis Arnold Caccavo (M.D. Dec. 1943) 51 Thibault Parkway Burlington, VT 05401 (802) 862-3841 Carleton R. Haines (M.D. Dec. 1943) 88 Mountain View Road Williston, VT 05495 (802) 878-3115 Harry M. Rowe (M.D. March 1943) 65 Main Street P.O. Box 755 Wells River, VT 05081 (802) 757-2325 [email protected]

(2004-2006)

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY

john tampas, m.d. ’54 ( ONGOING ) MEMBERS - AT- LARGE ( SIX-YEAR TERMS )

james c. hebert, m.d. ’77 (2000-2006)

paul b. stanilonis, m.d. ’65 (2000-2006)

1944 Wilton W. Covey 357 Weybridge Street Middlebury, VT 05753 (802) 388-1555

(2004-2006)

(2002-2008)

frederick mandell, m.d. ’64 (2002-2008)

mark allegretta, ph.d. ’90 (2003-2009)

mark pasanen, m.d.’92 (2004-2010) naomi l. rice, m.d.’00 (2004-2010)

h. james wallace iii, m.d. ’88 (2004-2010)

R E U N I O N

Porter H. Dale 5 McKinley Street Montpelier, VT 05602 (802) 229-9258

1948

1949

don p. chan, m.d. ’76 leslie s. kerzner, m.d. ’95

George H. Bray 110 Brookside Road New Britain, CT 06052 (860) 225-3302

S. James Baum 1790 Fairfield Beach Road Fairfield, CT 06430 (203) 255-1013 [email protected]

carleton r. haines, m.d.’43 (2002-2008)

1947

’ 0 5

1945 Robert E. O’Brien 414 Thayer Beach Road Colchester, VT 05446 (802) 862-0394 [email protected] H. Gordon Page 9 East Terrace South Burlington, VT 05403 (802) 864-7086

James Arthur Bulen P.O. Box 640339 Beverly Hills, FL 34464 (352) 746-4513 [email protected] Joseph C. Foley 32 Fairmount Street Burlington, VT 05401 (802) 862-0040 [email protected] Richard E. Pease P.O. Box 14 Jericho, VT 05465 (802) 899-2543

Edward S. Sherwood 24 Worthley Road Topsham, VT 05076 (802) 439-5816 [email protected]

R E U N I O N

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1950 Simon Dorfman 8256 Nice Way Sarasota, FL 34238 (941) 926-8126 Chuck Miller writes: “Mary and I hope to attend the 55th 1950 class reunion in the spring. We hope that there is a good turnout!”

1952 Brewster Davis Martin Box 128 362 VT RT 110 Chelsea, VT 05038 (802) 685-4541

1953 Richard N. Fabricius 17 Fairview Road Old Bennington, VT 05201 (802) 442-4224 [email protected]

1954 John E. Mazuzan, Jr. 366 South Cove Road Burlington, VT 05401 (802) 864-5039 [email protected]

Congratulations to Michael Wiedman for being promoted to Professor at Harvard Medical School. He writes: “We attended the 20th reunion of one of my Everest expeditions, ‘Ultima Thule’. We continue to give evening

lectures on hypothermia with my hiking-sport wife Irenée, at Lakes of the Clouds Hut, under the summit of Mount Washington. The bad weather always cooperates.” Sumner Yaffe writes: “The 50th Reunion was spectacular. The medical school has grown significantly as well as have my classmates — all with grayish hair and many with increased weight!” John Tampas counters that he has in fact lost weight and has no gray hair, since he lost it all. He invites other class members to “weigh in.” Margaret Newton tells us: “I have been writing stories about my experiences as a physician. One has been published. I am working for universal health care.”

R E U N I O N

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1955 Stanley L. Burns 27 Colonial Square Burlington, VT 05401 (802) 862-6205 [email protected]

1956 Ira H. Gessner 1306 Northwest 31st Street Gainesville, FL 32605 (352) 378-1820 [email protected]

1957 Larry Coletti 34 Gulliver Circle Norwich, CT 06360 (860) 887-1450 [email protected]

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M.D. CLASS NOTES H A L L A

Donald Zehl reports: “Sue and I have moved to ‘The Cedars of Chapel Hill’ — a continuing care retirement community. In our sixteenth year of retirement. Email: [email protected]”.

1958 Peter Ames Goodhue Stamford Gynecology, P.C. 70 Mill River Street Stamford, CT 06902 (203) 359-3340

Congratulations to Neil Diorio, who lives in Thousand Oaks, Calif., and recently published a suspense novel titled The Will. Brian Supple, M.D.’94 reported: “I have already had the pleasure of reading Neil Diorio’s wellwritten book. He has done a fantastic job.”

1959

’ 0 5

1960 Marvin A. Nierenberg 6 West 77th Street New York, NY 10024 (212) 874-6484 [email protected] Melvyn H. Wolk Clinton Street P.O. Box 772 Waverly, PA 18471 (570) 563-2215 [email protected]

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Wilfrid L. Fortin 17 Chapman Street Nashua, NH 03060 (603) 882-6202 [email protected] George Reservitz is “enjoying retirement after 35 years of active practice of urology and 22 years as Chief of the Division of Urology at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass.”

1962 Ruth Andrea Seeler 2431 North Orchard Chicago, IL 60614 (773) 472-3432

1963 John J. Murray P.O. Box 607 Colchester, VT 05446 (802) 865-9390 [email protected] H. Alan Walker 229 Champlain Drive Plattsburgh, NY 12901 (518) 561-8991

Jay E. Selcow 27 Reservoir Road Bloomfield, CT 06002 (860) 243-1359 [email protected]

R E U N I O N

1961

Arnold Kerzner writes: “I continue to work more than my body and mind allows for; but I love child/family psychiatry. I have recently been elected as President-Elect to the New England Council on Child Psychiatry. I’ll enjoy work while you enjoy your retirements.”

1964 Anthony P. Belmont 211 Youngs Point Road Wiscasset, ME 04578 (207) 882-6228 [email protected]

Lester Wurtele reports: “Our second grandchild, Zachary Matthew Sugerman, was born on November 8, 2004. He is every bit as wonderful as his big sister Sara Jane who is 21 months. Still practicing radiology. Had the good fortune to be able to return to Vermont twice this year.”

R E U N I O N

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1965 George A. Little 97 Quechee Road Hartland, VT 05048 (802) 436-2138 george.a.little@ dartmouth.edu Joseph H. Vargas, III 574 US RT 4 East Rutland Town, VT 05701 (802) 775-4671 [email protected] Allan Gardner writes: “Barb and I will continue to work full time in our profession for another five years and then will probably retire back in New England. Looking forward to 40th Reunion.” Special congratulations are also in order for several members of the Class of 1965 who will receive Medical Alumni Association Awards during Reunion this June. Pat Fenn was selected for the A. Bradley Soule Award while Joseph Vargas and Frederick Burkle will both receive the Service to Medicine & Community Award.

1966

(908) 359-6161 [email protected]

Robert George Sellig 31 Overlook Drive Queensbury, NY 12804 (518) 793-7914 [email protected]

Susan Pitman Lowenthal 75 Blue Swamp Road Litchfield, CT 06759 (860) 597-8996 susan_w_pitmanlowen [email protected]

G. Millard Simmons 2101 Calusa Lakes Blvd. Nokomis, FL 34275 (941) 484-6418 [email protected]

1967 John F. Dick, II P.O. Box 60 Salisbury, VT 05769 (802) 352-6625 Virginia Barnes Grogean writes: “Continue to enjoy retirement in Maine. Son Scott is finishing a residency in internal medicine at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, MA where he lives with his wife Kayda and 4-year-old son. Son Tim has begun a pediatric practice in Torrington, Conn. He was married to Claudia Lopez this past summer. She is an OB/GYN resident at UConn.”

1968 David Jay Keller 4 Deer Run Mendon, VT 05701 (802) 773-2620 [email protected] Timothy John Terrien 14 Deerfield Road South Burlington, VT 05403 (802) 862-8395

1969 Charles B. Howard 256 Bridgepoint Road Belle Mead, NJ 08502

R E U N I O N

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1970 Raymond Joseph Anton 1521 General Knox Road Russell, MA 01071 (413) 568-8659 [email protected] John F. Beamis, Jr. 24 Lorena Road Winchester, MA 01890 (781) 729-7568 [email protected]

1971 Wayne E. Pasanen 117 Osgood Street North Andover, MA 01845 (978) 681-9393 wpasanen@lowell general.org

1972 F. Farrell Collins, Jr. 205 Page Road Pinehurst, NC 28374 (910) 295-2429 John Oprendek tells us his “wife, Melissa, is in her third year of study at the University of Maine at Augusta. Daughter Janet is Director of Operations for Flagship Cinemas for the state of Maine and is supervising our new theater in Waterville. Son John III is doing respite care in Burlington, Vt.” Joe Benedict writes that he is “currently Chairman of the Department of Path-

DEVELOPMENT NEWS FURTHEST AND NEAREST The Medical Alumni Association’s MAA Challenge Scholarship program has attracted generous donors from across the class years at the College of Medicine. In the past few months, MAA challenges have emerged from among the most recent of graduates, and those farthest from their days at the school. Davis Evelti, M.D.’93 became the most recent alumni donor in the program when he established the Mary Marlow Evelti Scholarship, a $20,000 term scholarship, in memory of his late mother. Mary Evelti represented District 7-1 in the Vermont House of Representatives for fourteen years, beginning in 1976. During this time she served with distinction on the Education Committee and Health and Welfare Committee. She became UVM’s oldest undergraduate when she enrolled at the university in 1997. Also recently, a member of the Class of 1915 was honored by the establishment of another MAA scholarship. The late Morris Wineck, M.D.’15, was honored by his grandchildren with an endowed scholarship in his name. Dr. Wineck died in Morris 1984, but left behind a strong Wineck, attachment between his famiM.D.’15 ly and the school where his medical career began. The Wineck family established the scholarship in 1984, and have now significantly enhanced its value through the MAA Challenge Program.

SEELER ADDS TO FUND Ruth Seeler, M.D.’62 has long been concerned with the heavy debt burdens current medical graduates face

when starting their careers. In 2000 she acted on her concerns and established the first MAA Challenge endowed scholarship. Now Dr. Seeler has deepened her commitment with a new estate provision of over $300,000 for the Ruth Seeler M.D.’62 Endowed Scholarship fund, ensuring an even greater impact in perpetuity.

REUNION GIVING Medical Reunion is coming up this June, and already members of the various reunion classes are planning and making generous gifts to commemorate their milestones. One such donor is Marjorie Topkins, M.D.’50 who has made a substantial gift to the College in memory of her father, Samuel Topkins, M.D.’15. Marjorie Topkins’ gift will be remembered with the naming of one of the new Medical Education Center small group learning rooms as the “Topkins Family Room.”

GIFT FOR A FRIEND Over the years, we hear many stories from alumni about classmates who influenced them, helped them in medical school, and often remained lifelong friends. A 2005 reunion class member who wishes to remain anonymous has a suggestion for fellow graduates who are returning for their reunion this year. The reunion class member has made a contribution to the Student Locker Fund in honor of a classmate — and has instructed that the plate on the locker bear the classmate’s name as a surprise for the classmate. The reunion class member challenges other alumni to think about those who inspired them in medical school and to similarly honor them through the locker project.

S P R I N G

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M.D. CLASS NOTES H A L L A

ology at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London, Conn. Still enjoying singing tenor in various groups. Sang in concert with Berkshire Choral Festival in Canterbury Cathedral in June 2004 (Puccini’s Messa di Gloria and Rossini’s Stabat Mater) — very moving. Plan to sing Mozart Requiem at the International Choral Festival at Innsbruck, Austria in June 2005.”

1973 James M. Betts 715 Harbor Road Alameda, CA 94502 (510) 523-1920 [email protected] Philip L. Cohen 483 Lakewood Drive Winter Park, FL 32789 (407) 628-0221 [email protected] Victor Pisanelli is “still practicing general surgery in Rutland, Vt.”

1974 Douglas M. Eddy 5 Tanbark Road Windham, NH 03087 (603) 434-2164 [email protected] Cajsa Schumacher 441 Church Hill Road Morrisville, VT 05661 (802) 888-1799 [email protected] Walter Jacobs writes: “Still in solo family practice. Enjoyed Reunion. Daughter Alexandria begins college in September and son Travis enters law school in August.” Congratulations

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PUTTING FACES TO THE NAMES Over the last few months, several new people have joined the Medical Development and Alumni Relations office. The full staff gathered at their headquarters in Farrell Hall on UVM’s Trinity campus are: front row, Assistants Lisa Denton, Jane Aspinall, and Elyzabeth Massucci, Assistant Dean Rick Blount, Director of Major Gifts Manon O’Connor; back row, Director of Medical Annual Giving Sarah Keblin, Development Operations Manager Ginger Lubkowitz, Development Officer Erin Douglas, and Director of Medical Alumni Relations Kelli Shonter.

to John Persing, who was recently elected president of the Association of Academic Chairmen of Plastic Surgery and ChairElect of the American Board of Plastic Surgery. Jeffrey Allen reports: “Living in Naples, Fla. I’m doing practice management consulting and financial planning for physicians, having received a Masters in Medical Management from Carnegie Mellon in 2000 and a Certificate in Financial Planning from Florida State University in 2003. Two daughters at home in eighth and tenth grade, and son Michael is a realtor in Burlington.”

R E U N I O N

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1975 Ellen Andrews 195 Midland Road Pinehurst, NC 28374 (910) 295-6464 [email protected]

Congratulations Patrick Catalano, who will receive the Medical Alumni Association’s Distinguished Academic Achievement Award during Reunion this June.

1976 Don P. Chan Cardiac Associates of New Hampshire Suite 103 246 Pleasant Street Concord, NH 03301 (603) 224-6070 [email protected]

1977 Mark A. Popovsky 22 Nauset Road Sharon, MA 02067 (781) 784-8824 mpopovsky@ haemonetics.com Scott MacDonald writes: “Donna and I are still in Las Vegas. This year will be our eighteenth year here and we still love it. Donna is the director of

nursing at a large local convalescent facility and I am still a partner in the largest all cardiology group in Nevada. Ah! To have the simple, uncomplicated life of a med student again!”

1978 Paul McLane Costello Essex Pediatrics, Ltd. 89 Main Street Essex Junction, VT 05452 (802) 879-6556

1979 Sarah Ann McCarty 1018 Big Bend Road Barboursville, WV 25504 (304) 691-1094 [email protected]

R E U N I O N

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1980 Richard Nicholas Hubbell 80 Summit Street Burlington, VT 05401 (802) 862-5551

rich.hubbell@ vtmednet.org

1983

rshumway@ stfranciscare.org

Congratulations to Steve Davis, a specialist in pediatric critical care medicine at The Children’s Hospital at The Cleveland Clinic, who has been appointed to the newly formed Pediatric Central Institutional Review Board of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The group will use its clinical, scientific and ethical expertise to review NCI-sponsored clinical trials and treatment protocols. Congratulations also go to Marshall Forstein, who will receive the Medical Alumni Association’s Service to Medicine & Community Award during Reunion this June.

Diane M. Georgeson 2 Ravine Parkway Oneonta, NY 13820 (607) 433-1620 [email protected]

R E U N I O N

1981 Craig Wendell Gage 5823 Interbay Blvd. Tampa, FL 33611 CraigGage@ alumni.uvm.edu Andrew Weber writes: “We enjoyed Marc’s bar mitzvah this November. I was disappointed with Dr. Howard Dean’s loss in the primary but proud of his efforts. I hope to ski in Vermont this February and sun in Georgia Sea Island for my 50th birthday.”

1982 Linda Hood 4 Cobbler Lane Bedford, NH 03110 (603) 471-2536 [email protected]

Anne Marie Massucco 15 Cedar Ledge Road West Hartford, CT 06107 (860) 521-6120 Steven Klein reports: “Twenty-one years after graduation and there is much to be thankful for. I have two wonderful, wild rebellious daughters of college age (who have no professional interests in medicine). And, although insurance companies, drug companies & governmental agencies toil mightily to squelch any enjoyment of the practice of family medicine on Long Island, N.Y., I still derive enough personal satisfaction to make the entire journey worthwhile!” Edward Havranek was the lead author of the article “Predictors of the Onset of Depressive Symptoms in Patients With Heart Failure” which was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. He has been a staff cardiologist at Denver Health since 1991 and is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado at Denver Health Science Center.

1984 Richard C. Shumway 34 Coventry Lane Avon, CT 06001 (860) 673-6629

UPCOMING EVENTS March 17 Match Day

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1985 Vito D. Imbasciani 1915 North Crescent Heights Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90069 (323) 656-1316 [email protected] Katherine Stoddard Pope will receive the Medical Alumni Association’s Service to Medicine & Community Award during Reunion this June. While serving in Iraq with the California National Guard last fall, Vito Imbasciani kept a weblog of his experiences over the four months. To read “The Baghdad Diaries”, visit Vito’s website at www.yovito.com.

1986 Darrell Edward White 29123 Lincoln Road Bay Village, OH 44140 (440) 892-4681 [email protected] Clifton Slade just returned from the 31st Combat Support Hospital, Baghdad, Iraq. Nicole Noyes reports: “All is well in NYC. Job is great. Three kids. Skiing often.” Khin Khin Gyi writes that she started her sabbatical at UCLA in January of 2005. “Updating my skills in electrophysiology. Will keep you all posted. Hope to return to Burlington in 2006 for our twentieth reunion.”

April 15 American College of Physicians 2005 Annual Meeting San Francisco Marriott San Francisco, California April 16 Alumni Executive Committee Meeting May 22 College of Medicine Commencement June 10-12 Medical Reunion 2005 June 11 Planned Giving Meeting August 3 Fourth Annual Peter A. Martin Brain Aneurysm Golf Tournament Champlain Country Club St. Albans, Vt. August 6 Madi’s Fund for Hydrocephalus & Associated Neurosurgical Research Annual Fundraiser Summit Lodge Killington, Vt. September 21 An Evening in Celebration of UVM American Museum of Natural History New York, N.Y. October 7-9 UVM Homecoming October 8 College of Medicine Family Day For updates on events see: www.med.uvm.edu/ medalum

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1988 H. James Wallace, III 416 Martel Lane St. George, VT 05495 (802) 872-8533 james.wallace@ vtmednet.org

Lawrence I. Wolk 5724 South Nome Street Greenwood Village, CO 80111 (303) 771-1289 lawrence.wolk@ cigna.com

dren following the birth of my second daughter Michelle last August. Both my wife Patricia and I are urologists in Roseville, Calif. and are doing fine.”

David Couillard tells us: “We now have three chil-

1989

CONTINUING MEDICAL EDUCATION

2005 CONFERENCE SCHEDULE The Stowe Conference on Digestive Diseases March 4-5, 2005, Trapp Family Lodge, Stowe, Vt. Child Psychiatry for the Primary Care Clinician May 6, 2005, Hampton Inn and Conference Center, Colchester, Vt. Women’s Health: Perception, Prevention, and Practice May 12-14, 2005, University of Vermont Conference Center at the Sheraton Hotel, Burlington, Vt. Family Practice Review Course June 8-11, 2005, University of Vermont Conference Center at the Sheraton Hotel, Burlington, Vt. Vermont Summer Pediatric Seminar June 16-19, 2005, The Equinox, Manchester Center, Vt. CardioRenal Symposium for the Primary Care Provider August 5-7, 2005, Trapp Family Lodge, Stowe, Vt. ALS – Update in the New Millennium August 15-16, 2005, Sheraton Harborside, Portsmouth, N.H. Primary Care Sports Medicine August 31-September 2, 2005, University of Vermont Conference Center at the Sheraton Hotel, Burlington, Vt. College of Medicine alumni receive a special 10% discount on all UVM Continuing Medical Education conferences.

For more information contact: Continuing Medical Education Farrell Hall 210 Colchester Avenue Burlington, VT 05405 (802) 656-2292 http://cme.uvm.edu

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Mark Eliot Pasanen 1234 Spear Street South Burlington, VT 05403 (802) 865-3281 mark.pasanen@ vtmednet.org

1993

Peter M. Nalin 13216 Griffin Run Carmel, IN 46033 (317) 962-6656 [email protected]

R E U N I O N

1992

Joanne Taplin Romeyn 22 Patterson Lane Durham, CT 06422 (860) 349-6941

’ 0 5

1990 Barbara Angelika Dill 120 Hazel Court Norwood, NJ 07648 (201) 767-7778 barbrichanddillon@ earthlink.net Christopher Pilcher will receive the Medical Alumni Association’s Recent Alumni Award during Reunion this June.

1991 John Dewey 15 Eagle Street Cooperstown, NY 13326 [email protected]

Leo Gabriel Katzman was born to Philip and Joanne Katzman on September 17, 2003. Congratulations are also due to Mitzi Garahan. Mitzi was named one of San Diego’s “Top Doctors” in anesthesiology by San Diego Magazine. Mitzi was nominated by colleagues in the San Diego County Medical Society.

1994 Holliday Kane Rayfield P.O. Box 819 Waitsfield, VT 05673 (802) 496-5667 [email protected] Holliday Kane Rayfield gave birth to Miranda Louis Rayfield on November 23. Miranda was seven weeks early but Holliday reports she’s home and the whole family is doing great.

R E U N I O N

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1995 Allyson Miller Bolduc 252 Autumn Hill Road South Burlington, VT 05403 (802) 863-4902 allyson.bolduc@ vtmednet.org

Congratulations to Allyson Bolduc! Allyson will receive the MAA’s Recent Alumni Award during Reunion this June. Peter Christakos writes: “I was married three years ago in Virginia and we have been living in the seacoast area of New Hampshire. We have a two year old son,

Nicolas, who keeps us moving. Parenting is my favorite job thus far!” Peter and his family will be relocating from New Hampshire to Massachusetts. Holly Mason reports: “After doing residencies in Chicago and living in the Bay area of California for two years while Ted completed his fellowship at Stanford, we finally settled down in Westfield, Mass. I am a surgeon at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield (part of the Dept. of Surgery) doing primarily breast surgery. Ted is in private practice doing otology and neurootology. He has established the first cochlear implant program in western Massachusetts. In July ’03, we welcomed our first child, Sophia, who is the light of our lives.” Congratulations to Brooke Spencer! Brooke is an Interventional Radiologist in Scottsdale, AZ now. In July 2004, she married John Sposato and his daughter Elizabeth (3½ years) in Norwich, Vt. on her parents’ farm. Leslie Kerzner tells us: “Steve and I are enjoying life on the North Shore of Massachusetts with our two daughters Elana (almost 5) and Adriana (1 year). We went to Brooke Spencer’s wedding in July. Last year, we saw Lori (Everling) Deschene and her twin girls. Hope to see a lot of classmates at the Reunion.” Tracy Phuong Tram writes: “Hello everybody! Best wishes.” Laurie

GORDON MILLER / MEDICAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Yntema reports: “I am now in my seventh year with a busy internal medicine practice in Ellsworth, Maine. It continues to be challenging on every level — which means both satisfying and exhausting, of course. I still feel grateful to be doing this job. To keep things particularly interesting, in the last several years I have gotten divorced and remarried, and have decided to become a parent at age 46 — I expect to be adopting a little boy from Russia later this year. Never a dull moment!”

ADMISSIONS TRANSITIONS With the retirement this fall of Cathleen Gleeson, Ph.D., who had directed the admissions office of the College since 1995, two interim appointments were announced by Dean Evans. James Rathmell, M.D., at left, now serves as Interim Associate Dean for Admissions, and Tiffany Delaney, at right, is Interim Director of Admissions.

1996

1997

Anne Marie Valente 4616 Dolwick Drive Durham, NC 27713 (919) 806-8110

Julie Clifford Smail 3094 Mt. Baker Circle Oak Harbor, WA 98277 (360) 240-8693 jsmail@ fidalgomedical.com

Patricia Ann King, M.D., Ph.D. 832 South Prospect Street Burlington, VT 05401 (802) 862-7705 patricia.king@ vtmednet.org Lisa Belisle reports: “My husband, Kevin, and I are still living in Yarmouth, Maine with our three children, Campbell (11), Abby (8½) and Sophie (3½). Our days are filled with family activities. I have a private practice and continue to precept UVM students and Family Medicine residents at Maine Medical Center. I’m also involved with Maine’s statewide medical office-based literacy program Raising Readers.”

Patty Salisbury writes: “I moved to Australia two years ago, on the far south coast of New South Wales, and live in a rural area about ten minutes from the beach. All my kids have joined me and we love it here! I work part time running an Aboriginal Health Clinic and the rest of the time divide between a busy private practice, obstetrics, running the ED one night a week and going around Australia teaching ALSO (Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics). We have a small farm and life is good. If you remember my kids, they’re all grown up now. Wade just graduated high school and is working

in construction, saving money for an overseas trip, Skye and Forrest are in university and Leif is a stonemason. It’s still a wild time when we are all together! If anyone wants to come and visit, they sure are welcome.”

1998 Halleh Akbarnia 4700 Bromley Lane Richmond, VA 23226 (804) 204-2595 [email protected] Benjamin Lowenstein recently joined the medical staff at Portsmouth Regional Hospital in New Hampshire. He also practices cardiology at Seacoast Cardiology in York, Maine. Congratulations Stephen Messier, who has been accepted into the Air Force Neonatology Fellowship program at the San Antonio Uniformed Services Health Education Consor-

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M.D. CLASS NOTES H A L L A

tium (SAUSHEC), located at Wilford Hall Medical Center. He will begin the three-year fellowship in July 2005. Since completing his pediatric residency at Wilford Hall Medical Center, Stephen has served for the past four years as chief pediatrician at Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska.

1999 Everett Jonathan Lamm 18 Roberts Drive Hampton, NH 03842 (603) 929-7555 [email protected] Deanne Dixon Haag 4215 Pond Road Sheldon, VT 05483 (802) 524-7528

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Bay Medical Center as a new internist. She also shares a practice at Glen Cove Internal Medicine in Rockport, Maine. Laura has a special interest in women’s health, cardiology, and diabetology. Before joining PBMC, she was chief resident in internal medicine at Maine Medical Center in Portland.

2001 Ladan Farhoomand 1481 Regatta Road Carlsbad, CA 92009 626-201-1998 [email protected] Joel W. Keenan Greenwich Hospital Five Perryridge Road Greenwich, CT 06830

[email protected] JoAn Louise Monaco Suite 6-F, The Sophian Plaza 4618 Warwick Blvd. Kansas City, MO 64112 (816) 753-2410 [email protected]

2002 Jonathan Vinh Mai 15 Meadow Lane Danville, PA 17821 (570) 275-4681 [email protected]

2003

South Burlington, VT 05403 (802) 864-7787 scott.goodrich@ vtmednet.org Havaleh Gagne reports: “In January 2003, Steve and I had a baby girl, Jaydenne. I had a good review of general medicine, OB and pediatrics for boards by the end of the year. Internship flew by, and now we are living outside of Syracuse while I work on radiation oncology residency.”

Omar Khan 33 Clearwater Circle Shelburne, VT 05482 (802) 985-1131 [email protected]

Michael Jim Lee Apt. 413 2300 Overlook Road Cleveland Heights, OH 44106 (216) 229-7799 michael_j_lee1681@ yahoo.com Naomi Leeds Rice, M.P.H. Apt. 5, 38 Grove Street Boston, MA 02114 (617) 771-8060 [email protected] Laura Trask joined the medical staff at Penobscot

M E D I C I N E

TODAY!

Visit with classmates and friends Access the interactive, secure College of Medicine alumni directory

ALUMNI.UVM.EDU/COM Update your personal information Enjoy free lifetime e-mail forwarding and your personal UVM alumni address

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Jay Edmond Allard USNH Yokosuka PSC475 Box 1757 FPO, AP 9L350 [email protected]

V E R M O N T

CONNECT WITH YOUR CLASSMATES CONNECTION

Scott Goodrich 13 Mountain View Blvd.

2000

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UVM

S I M P LY L O G O N T O A C T I V A T E Y O U R A C C O U N T ! MEDICAL ALUMNI ASSOCIATION INITIATES GRADUATE ALUMNI AWARD The College of Medicine is excited to announce the creation of the Medical Alumni Association Graduate Alumni Award. The award will be given to an alumnus/a from the UVM College of Medicine’s Ph.D. or M.S. programs who has demonstrated: outstanding achievement in basic, clinical or applied research, education, and/or industry; exemplary public service and humanitarianism; and/or outstanding commitment to the College of Medicine community. Awardees will serve as role models for current students, and the nominees will be evaluated by the Graduate Awards committee. The committee is seeking nominations from alumni and will review all nominees. The Graduate Awards committee is made up of UVM graduate alumni, faculty, current students and Senior Associate Dean for Research and Academic Affairs, Russell Tracy, Ph.D. The first award will be given in the fall of 2005. To submit a nomination, visit the medical alumni website by going to http://alumni.uvm.edu/com/ and click on “Graduate Alumni,” or call (802) 656-4014.

Help your classmates and friends reconnect with you. Activate your account at ALUMNI.UVM.EDU/COM Using your ten-digit UVM ID # located on the Vermont Medicine mailing label, Or contact the Medical Alumni Office for your ID number: E-mail: [email protected] or 802-656-4014

UVM

The UVM Connection the on-line community for alumni, parents, and friends of UVM

CONNECTION

ALUMNI.UVM.EDU/COM

OBITUARIES H A L L A

IN MEMORIAM WILLIAM MACDONALD JR ., M . D.’71

Dr. MacDonald died February 19, 2004 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Born in Providence, R.I. on January 1, 1945, he attended Brown University before earning his undergraduate degree at the College of Medicine. He was an intern and resident at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California, San Diego. He joined the Everett Clinic in the State of Washington in 1976 as a cardiologist and served as president and Board Chair since 1996. He also served on the Board of Directors for the Strategic Planning Board of Providence Health Systems and was a Board Director for First Choice Health Network. He married Karen Knight in 1968, and had three children. MERTON N . FLANDERS , M . D.’36

Dr. Flanders died April 1, 2004 in Lewiston, Maine. Born Aug. 9, 1909, in Hampden, Maine, he attended public schools in Portland and was graduated from Portland High School in the Class of 1928. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Maine at Orono in 1932, before earning his M.D. He interned at Maine Medical Center in Portland and Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. Dr. Flanders completed his residency at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary followed by post graduate endoscopy training at Jefferson Post Graduate School of Medicine, and maxillofacial and plastic training at Post Graduate School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps as a Captain from 1941 to 1946, including service in the

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Obituaries of these College of Medicine alumni will appear in a subsequent issue of Vermont Medicine:

Howard Jacobs, M.D.’43 Henry Tulip, M.D.’47 Irene I. Siu, M.D.’49 Arnold C. Taye, M.D.’57 David A. Austin, M.D.’60 Robert Smart, M.D.’67

s Philippines. Following his tour of duty in the service he took training in Otolaryngology Surgery at the Lempert Endoural Institute in NYC. He started his private practice in Waterville, Maine, followed by 35 years of practice in Lewiston. He retired from private practice in 1972, to become Medical Evaluation Officer at the Department of Adjudication for Togus Veterans Hospital in Augusta. He permanently retired in 1978. ROGER FRANCIS GREENSLET, M . D.’53

Dr. Greenslet died August 18, 2004 at his home in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass. He was 83. He was born on July 22, 1921 in Bennington, Vt. In 1939, Dr. Greenslet was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania where he studied optometry and received his degree in 1943. The advent of World War II saw Sgt. Greenslet shipped out to England and subsequently to Europe where he spent three years as a medic in the Army’s

45th Field Hospital unit. The 45th Field Hospital was attached to Patton’s Third Army and cared for troops during the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, Dr. Greenslet enrolled in the University of Vermont to fulfill his dream of becoming a medical doctor. He received his M.D. in 1953. In 1955, Dr. Greenslet moved his family to Manchester where he practiced medicine until 1969. In 1969, due to illness, Dr. Greenslet reluctantly closed his private practice. The following year he accepted Beverly (Mass.) Hospital’s invitation to help design the first emergency room department. Dr. Greenslet served as chief of the emergency room department at Beverly Hospital until 1975 when he joined GTE/Sylvania as medical director. He retired in 1986.

Bronze Star and Silver Star for his actions in combat. He was discharged as a major in 1946. In 1946, he began general practice in Monroe, N.H., where he lived and worked until 1970. He was on the staff at Brightlook Hospital in St. Johnsbury, Vt., and Cottage Hospital in Woodsville, N.H. He made house calls throughout the Northeast Kingdom, visiting almost every home in about a dozen towns and villages. For many years he was also Grafton County Medical Examiner. In 1970, he moved to Newmarket, N.H., where he was physician at the UNH Health Center (Hood House) until retirement in 1988. He and his wife, Elvira, moved to Gainesville in January of 2004. PETER V. BOVE , M . D.’55

Dr. Bove died on September 27, 2004, after a long illness. He was a native of Bristol, Conn. and attended the University of Connecticut before joining the Class of 1955 at the College of Medicine. He served in

the United States Air Force from 1956 until 1958 before completing his residency at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. Dr. Bove lived on the San Francisco Peninsula, where he practiced medicine as a pediatrician for 36 years, both in private practice and at Peninsula, Mary’s Help, and Mills Hospitals. Devoted to the health and well-being of children, he also volunteered his services for Samaritan House. KEHNROTH SCHRAMM , M . D.’58

Dr. Schramm, of North Vancouver, British Columbia, died on Sept. 24, 2004. Born in White Plains, N.Y., in 1932, he graduated from Dartmouth College before earning his M.D. at the College of Medicine. He performed his internship and residency in pediatrics and psychiatry at Syracuse Medical Center. He taught at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., McGill University, and the University of Regina. He moved to Calgary in 1973 to complete a residency in psychiatry and became the senior

psychiatric resident at Foothills Hospital. He practiced family psychiatry in Vancouver for 25 years. In recent years he was a doctoral candidate in education at the University of British Columbia. PAULINE E . CLARKE , M . D.’50

Dr. Clarke passed away October 7, 2004, in Indialantic, Fla. Born December 1, 1922 in Mt. Vernon, New York, she was a longtime resident of Fairfield, Conn. Dr. Clarke first enlisted in the United States Navy in September 1941 and reenlisted after completing medical school at the College of Medicine. During her military career, she obtained the rank of Commander and served at the U.S. Naval Hospital in San Diego, The Naval Medical School in Bethesda, Maryland, and the U.S. Naval Hospital in Chelsea, Massachusetts. She resigned her commission in 1963 and moved to Florida. Dr. Clarke practiced in Brevard County for many years.

PAUL MERRILL CHOATE , M . D.’40

Dr. Choate died in Gainesville, Fla., Sept. 18, 2004, from complications following a hip fracture. He was born in West Barnet, Vt., Jan. 17, 1916. After grammar school in West Barnet, he attended Peacham Academy for two years and Vermont Academy in Saxtons River, where he graduated in 1933. He received his B.S. at the University of Vermont in 1937, before coming to the College of Medicine. He joined the U.S. Army in 1941, and served as a medical officer in the First Infantry Division. Attached to the 924 Field Artillery Battalion, Dr. Choate participated in campaigns in Tunisia, Morocco, Sicily, Normandy (Omaha Beach), the Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge), the Rhineland and Czechoslovakia, returning to the U.S. Sept. 27, 1945. He received a Purple Heart,

FACULTY NORMAN ALPERT, PH . D.

Professor Norman Alpert, Ph.D., died November 27, 2004 at his home in Shelburne, Vt. He was a colleague, mentor, and friend to many at the College of Medicine, and an internationally recognized authority in the area of cardiac hypertrophy and energetics. Dr. Alpert earned his A.B. degree from Wesleyan University in 1943, and his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1951. He joined the College of Medicine faculty in 1966 as professor and chair of the Depart-

ment of Physiology & Biophysics. During the next 29 years he built one of the premier departments of muscle biology focused on heart failure. He was also the founder of Bio-Tek Instruments of Winooski, Vt. At the time of his death at age 82, Dr. Alpert was still very active as a principal Investigator of a National Institutes of Health R01 grant, as well as first author of a manuscript in press concerning Familial Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.

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A Pioneer Remembered Eva R. Sargent, M.D.’35, was used to “firsts.” She was among the first women graduates of the College, and was the only woman in her graduating class. She was the first in her family to attend college, much less earn a medical degree. And Dr. Sargent continued to be on the leading edge of change in her medical practice; she even co-invented a special extracting device she’d developed through the thousands of deliveries she attended in her EVA SARGENT, M.D.’35

december 14, 2004 4:30 p.m. Standardized patient Eric Zellman waits his turn in the hallway of the Professional Learning

obstetrical practice. Now, through a trust established by Dr. Sargent and her husband, and the generosity of her sons, her “firsts” continue. When a group of medical students gather next fall in the just-opened Medical Education Center for their first small-group learning experience under the College’s new curriculum, they’ll do so in the Eva Sargent M.D.’35 Room. All thanks to the foresight and generosity of this medical pioneer.

and Assessment Center.

photograph by Andy Duback

To explore your options in giving to the College of Medicine, contact the Medical Development and Alumni Relations Office today: (802)656-4014 [email protected] www.med.uvm.edu/giving

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The return of the

CLASS OF ’15

They came to the College of Medicine when William Howard Taft was president, when the horse was still the main mode of transportation. They left to follow careers throughout Vermont and the nation, careers that would track the incredible change in medical practice in the 20th Century. Now they are gone, but the College continues to improve thanks to the generosity of Class of 1915 members and their families. Recently, the late Morris Wineck, M.D.’15, was honored by his grandchildren with an endowed scholarship in his name. And Marjorie Topkins, M.D.’50 made a substantial gift in memory of her father, Samuel Topkins, M.D.’15, that will be commemorated with the naming of a small-group learning room in the new Medical Education Center. Your gift to the Medical Annual Fund can have long-lasting effects for the medical students of today, and tomorrow. For more information contact us at:

medical development and alumni relations office (802)656-4014 [email protected] www.med.uvm.edu/giving

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