University of California, Irvine School of Medicine
The University of California, Irvine School of Medicine (UC Irvine School of Medicine or UCI School of Medicine) is an LCME accredited[1] medical school, co-located in Orange County's cities of Irvine on the University of California, Irvine campus and Orange at the UC Irvine Medical Center. It is ranked as one of the top 50 U.S. medical schools for research by U.S. News & World Report.[2] The school was founded in 1896 by A.C. Moore and is the oldest continually operating medical school in the greater Los Angeles area. UC Irvine School of Medicine is renowned for patient care, education and research, under the motto of ‘Discover, Teach Heal.’
- The School of Medicine features 19 clinical and 6 basic science departments[3] with 560 full-time and 1,300 volunteer faculty members involved in teaching, patient care and advancing medical knowledge through scholarly medical and basic science research.
- Annually, the school educates and trains approximately 400 medical students along with 620 resident physicians and fellows in 50 different programs accredited by the American College of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).
- In addition to offering the professional MD degree, the school offers a combined MD–PhD medical scientist training program, a combined MD/MBA program with UCI’s Paul Merage School of Business and a unique combined MD/Master’s program called the Program in Medical Education for the Latino Community (PRIME-LC).
- Medical school research faculty are also engaged in educating more than 200 PhD and MS degree students through several graduate degree-granting programs. These include PhD programs in epidemiology, the interdisciplinary PhD program in cellular & molecular biosciences (CMB)[4] the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program (INP), pharmacology and toxicology, and MS programs in environmental toxicology and genetic counseling.
- Completed in 2009, the UC Irvine Douglas Hospital includes modern facilities for conducting the latest medical research and training future and practicing physicians. This seven-story hospital facility (OC Register, Jan. 23, 2009) [5] offers spacious, mostly private rooms and 19 state-of-the-art operating rooms. In addition, the new hospital provides an environment for translational research – allowing more opportunities for researchers and clinicians to collaborate on patient care.
In 2010, UC Irvine opened its $40.5 million, 65,000-square-foot (6,000 m2) on-campus medical education building that provides an innovative simulation training center along with clinical laboratories and telemedicine stations. The medical education building plays an important part in supporting new initiatives and technologies in teaching and health care delivery and is home to the Program in Medical Education for the Latino Community (PRIME-LC).[7]
The UC Irvine School of Medicine employs current computer technology to educate its students. It was the first medical school in the country (Daily Pilot, Aug. 7, 2010) to adopt a totally tablet-based curriculum; in 2010, its iPad iMedEd Initiative provided incoming freshman medical students with digital tablets on which were stored or from which were accessible electronically, all of their lectures, slides, handouts, and books for the first year of medical school. The school also was among the first to create a fully integrated four year curriculum in diagnostic bedside ultrasonography.
Research in several departments of the UC Irvine School of Medicine has placed these departments in the top 50 ranked by NIH and the Blue Ridge Institute. Research faculty are internationally renowned for discoveries in neuroscience, including the basis of memory (long-term potentiation); for the molecules that provide a ‘high’, and for cutting-edge biophotonic methods such as optical imaging available through the Beckman Laser Institute. Research in the school addresses interventions in a number of important human disorders including Alzheimer’s, ALS, autism, cancer, dementia, developmental disorders, epilepsy, eye problems, Huntington’s, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, pain, stroke, stuttering, viral disorders including herpes and many others.
Ralph V. Clayman MD, professor of urology, serves as dean of the School of Medicine. Terry A. Belmont serves as the chief executive officer of UC Irvine Medical Center and as associate vice chancellor for medical center affairs.
Research Affiliations
- Beckman Laser Institute
- Institute for Clinical and Translational Science
- Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders (UCI MIND)
- Institute for Immunology
- The Gavin Herbert Eye Institute
- Genetic Epidemiology Research Institute
- Health Policy Research Institute
- Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center
- Susan Samueli Center for Integrative Medicine
- Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center
- Brain Imaging Center
- Reeve-Irvine Research Center for spinal cord injury
- Joslin Center for Diabetes Research and Treatment
- Center for Virus Research
- Center for Hearing Research
- John Tu and Thomas Yuen Center for Functional Onco Imaging
- Center for Occupational and Environmental Health
- Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center
- Center for Drug Discovery & Development
- Multiple Sclerosis Research Center
- Center for Epigenetics & Metabolism
Programs
- PRIME-LC provides specialized training for future physicians leading to improved health care delivery, research, and policy in Latino communities in California. This program consists of three sections, undergraduate (medical school), graduate (residency program) and Continuing Medical Education (Post-Residency). The undergraduate section is a five-year MD/Master's program which responds to an increasing demand for physician-leaders who are culturally sensitive and linguistically competent to address the specific needs of Latino patients of all ages and backgrounds. Students are encouraged to pursue a master’s of personal interest to their career goals as they pertain to improving healthcare for medically-underserved Latinos.
- The iMedEd Initiative is reinventing the traditional medical school curriculum for the 21st century, becoming one of the first in the nation to build a completely digital, interactive learning environment. The initiative is designed to foster highly individualized and small-group learning for a richer medical school experience.
Notable Faculty
- Irwin Rose (Ph.D. 1952) - Nobel Laureate (2004)[5] - Known for Ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation
- Tallie Z. Baram, neurology and neurobiology
- Michael W. Berns, laser medicine
- Robert E. Bristow, gynecologic cancer
- William E. Bunney, Jr., psychiatry
- Michael Cahalan, molecular immunology
- Paolo Casali, molecular immunology
- Olivier Civelli, neuropharmacology
- Ralph V. Clayman, urology
- Philip J. Di Saia, gynecologic oncology
- Michael V. Drake, ophthalmology
- Scott Goodwin, radiological sciences
- Sheldon Greenfield, healthcare policy
- Sudhir Gupta, clinical immunology
- Anthony James, vector biology
- James Jester, opthalmology
- Claudia Kawas, neurology
- Antoine Khoury, pediatric urology
- Wen-Hwa Lee, cancer genetics
- Kathryn Larsen, family medicine
- John Longhurst, cardiology and integrative medicine
- Gerald Maguire, medical treatment of stuttering
- Frank L. Meyskens, Jr., oncology
- Laura Mosqueda, geriatrics
- Masayasu Nomura, molecular genetics
- Daniele Piomelli, pharmacology
- Manuel Porto, obstetrics and gynecology
- Paolo Sassone-Corsi, molecular genetics
- Ivan Soltesz, neuroscience
- Michael Stamos, surgery
- Eric Stanbridge, molecular Genetics
- Roger Steinert, ophthalmology
- Oswald Steward, spinal cord injury research
Research Distinctions
- The Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at UC Irvine is one of six in the nation – and the only one in Orange County – to conduct studies on promising new cancer prevention drugs, and it is the only one in Orange County to meet stringent standards of the American Society of Clinical Oncology as an exemplary clinical trial site.
- The Institute for Translational and Clinical Sciences received a prestigious Clinical and Translational Science Award of $20 million over five years from the National Institutes of Health to speed the transformation of scientific discoveries into medical advances for patients. UCI is one of 54 U.S. institutions to receive this award.
- UC Irvine is the home site for the Pacific-Southwest Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research – one of only 11 federally funded regional centers dedicated to research for countering threats from bioterrorism agents and infectious diseases.
- UC Irvine pediatric researchers are helping refine and field test the initial protocol for the National Children’s Study, planned as the largest and most comprehensive long-term study of environmental effects on child development and health in U.S. history. Orange County was named as one of six initial national Vanguard Centers for the study.
- UC Irvine opened the first building in Southern California funded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine solely dedicated to stem cell research, education and treatments. It is home to the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center.
- Treatments created by UC Irvine School of Medicine researchers are the basis of the world’s first two stem cell-based clinical trials for spinal cord injury therapies.
- UC Irvine brain imaging researchers are directing the Biomedical Informatics Research Network, a multi-million dollar, nationwide effort to standardize imaging methods that will allow for large-scale studies on brain disease and illness.
- UC Irvine vector biologist Anthony James, a National Academy of Science member, is leading an international effort funded by the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative to develop new genetic methods to control the transmission of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral disease affecting tens of millions of people worldwide.
- UC Irvine is rated as having among the top 50 U.S. medical schools for research, according to US News & World Report rankings. School of Medicine researchers received more than $150 million in research funding, nearly half of the campus total.
Teaching Distinctions
- The UC Irvine School of Medicine is the first to develop a philanthropically supported, completely iPad-compatible[8] curriculum. The entire course of study for the year – lectures, slides, handouts and books – is carried on the popular tablet computer.
- The UC Irvine School of Medicine features one of the most advanced medical education facilities in California. The state-of-the-art, 65,000-square-foot building contains a simulation center, instructional clinical laboratories, telemedicine stations and a teleteaching auditorium.
- The UC Irvine School of Medicine is among the first to develop a complete four-year diagnostic bedside ultrasound curriculum.
- The Program in Medical Education for the Latino Community (PRIME-LC) is the first in the country designed to train physician-leaders to serve the distinctive healthcare needs of the nation’s growing Latino population.
Clinical Distinctions
- The Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at UC Irvine is one of only 41 National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive centers[9] in the nation and the only one in Orange County.
- UC Irvine is one of 15 institutions nationwide funded and recognized as a Cancer Genetics Network center. The program is sponsored by the NCI to support collaborative[10] investigations into the genetic basis of cancer susceptibility, explore mechanisms to integrate this new knowledge into medical practice, and identify ways of addressing the associated psychosocial issues.
- UC Irvine is one of only seven institutions nationwide to be named a Level I Accredited Educational Institute by the American College of Surgeons.
- UC Irvine Medical Center has consistently been ranked among the top three percent of hospitals nationwide and best hospital in Orange County by US News & World Report.[11] It’s also the only Orange County hospital ranked among America’s best hospitals by U.S. News every year for the past decade.
- UC Irvine Healthcare is home to 94 Best Doctors in America® who are nationally renowned experts in more than 15 disciplines ranging from anesthesiology to urology specialties.
- UC Irvine Healthcare is a leader in robotic surgery nationally, especially in prostate, thyroid and gynecological cancers – first da Vinci® robot in Orange County, first robot-assisted spine surgery on the West Coast, first in the West and only hospital in California to perform transaxillary robotic thyrodectomies.
- UC Irvine Medical Center features Orange County’s only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center, only regional burn center, only Level I Trauma Center and the first Joint Commission-certified primary stroke center.
History
Although the School of Medicine joined UC Irvine in 1967, its lineage goes back more than 100 years to the very foundations of osteopathic medicine.
In 1896, the Pacific Sanitarium and School of Osteopathy was founded in the city of Anaheim. Upon moving to Los Angeles in 1904, and through a merger with the Los Angeles College of Osteopathy, the California College of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons was created in 1914 and would exist as such until 1961.
In that year, as the California Osteopathic Association merged with the California Medical Association, the California College of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons converted into an allopathic medical school. The California College of Medicine was born. Over the next three years, its administrators worked with the University of California to have it become the third UC medical school, joining those on the San Francisco and Los Angeles campuses.
This vision was realized on October 1, 1965, when the California College of Medicine passed into the full control of the UC Regents and became part of the University of California. Four days later, President Clark Kerr receives a CCM-faculty resolution requesting that the Regents designate UC Irvine as the campus on which the College of Medicine be developed.
On April 20, 1967, the UC Regents approved moving the California College of Medicine to the Irvine campus, thus creating the UC Irvine College of Medicine. Following that, on July 23, 1968, the Orange County Board of Supervisors approved an affiliation between the Orange County Medical Center and the UC Irvine College of Medicine, giving the medical school its teaching hospital.
Next, the UC Irvine College of Medicine moved onto the UC Irvine campus. On Aug. 29, 1968, a first-year class of 94 students began coursework in the Med Surge I and II buildings. Six years later, on October 3, 1974, the UC Regents purchased the Orange County Medical Center for $5.5 million. The facility was renamed the UC Irvine Medical Center.
The College of Medicine became the School of Medicine in 1994, and today it is among the top 50 research and teaching medical schools in the country, regularly receiving more than $150 million annually in grants and contract support. It is a hub of biomedical innovation with state-of-the-art research buildings in its Biomedical Research Center. In 2010, the School of Medicine dedicated Sue and Bill Gross Hall: A CIRM Institute, one of the first stem cell research and training facilities, and opened its Medical Education Building, which houses one of the most advanced telemedicine centers and medical education simulation centers in the country.
The UC Irvine Medical Center continues to grow and celebrated the opening of the flagship UC Irvine Douglas Hospital in 2009, which is the most advanced clinical training center in Orange County and among the finest in the United States.
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