Medical schools create funds to lure
doctors
BOSTON “”mdash; The University of California, San Francisco and
Harvard University hope to lure doctors back into the classroom by
creating multi-million endowments to offset time spent away from
patients.
Each school has committed about $10 million and are applying to
major foundations for additional funds to expand the programs. If
successful it could mark a radical change in medical education,
school officials said.
“This really does alter the structure of the medical
school in a very fundamental way,” said Dr. Daniel
Lowenstein, who came up with the idea at UCSF.
Lowenstein brought the idea to Harvard when he was hired as dean
of medical education.
The programs are designed to combat the economic pressure
doctors who double as professors feel to spend more time with
revenue-generating patients.
Some medical experts feel the squeeze could erode the level of
training for tomorrow’s doctors.
“We are jeopardizing the quality of care our children and
grandchildren will get,” Dr. Kenneth M. Ludmerer, a professor
of medicine and history at Washington University, told The Boston
Sunday Globe.
List angers community college
administrators
California’s community college system targeted 14 of 107
two-year colleges for having the worst record for transferring
students to state universities and more than half of them are in
the Los Angeles area.
The California Community Colleges list angered many of the
schools whose administrators see it as a list of shame assembled
under pressure from state legislators.
The list was assembled for the first time because this
year’s state budget ordered community college districts
“to increase the number of student transfers from
low-transfer community colleges by an average of 15 percent
annually.”
Transfers to the California State University and University of
California systems was the yardstick used by the chancellor’s
researchers and specified in the budget.
Critics said the list is misleading. Los Angeles Trade-Tech
College, for instance, was last on the list of schools with low
transfer rates.
“Los Angeles Trade-Tech, as it advertises in its name, has
primarily a vocational function. Our students primarily come here
to learn a trade so they can go out and make a living,” said
Leige Henderson, vice president of academic affairs.
Many of the bottom 14 serve large numbers of Latino and and
African American students, including Los Angeles Mission College,
Los Angeles Harbor College, East Los Angeles College, Rio Hondo
College, Cerritos College, Santa Ana College and Chaffey
College.
“This gives a completely false impression,” said
Ernest Moreno, president of East Los Angeles College. “Our
institution transfers the largest number of Hispanic students in
California, if not the United States.”
Flu vaccine shortage prompts cancellation
The Flu Vaccine Clinic, scheduled from Nov. 27 to Dec. 8 in the
University of California, San Francisco Ambulatory Care Center, has
been cancelled because of production and shipping delays of the flu
vaccine nationwide.
To ensure that the vaccine is available to those at highest
risk, the vaccine will be administered to patients who, among other
things are age 65 or older, children and teenagers who might be at
risk for developing Reye Syndrome after influenza infection, and
other patients who have a special need for the vaccine.
Compiled from Daily Bruin wire reports.