Baylor College of Medicine

Coordinates: 29°42′38″N 95°23′47″W / 29.7105°N 95.3965°W / 29.7105; -95.3965

Baylor College of Medicine
Established	1900
Type	Private Medical School
Endowment	US $778 million[1]
Faculty	3,378 (1,755 full-time, 327 part-time, 1,237 voluntary, and 59 emeritus)
Postgraduates	1,211 (678 in medical school, 533 in graduate school, and 130 in allied health)
Location	Houston, TX,, USA
Campus	Urban, Texas Medical Center
Website	www.bcm.edu

Baylor College of Medicine, located in Houston, Texas, USA, is a leading center for biomedical research and clinical care. Situated within the Texas Medical Center, a 1,000-acre (4.0 km²) complex that is home to 46 member institutions and is the largest medical center in the world, Baylor College of Medicine has affiliations with eight teaching hospitals, including the world-renowned Texas Children's Hospital, MD Anderson Cancer Center, The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research (TIRR), Menninger Clinic and Texas Heart Institute. It has been consistently considered one of the top medical schools in the greater Southwest and is the top-tier of programs in the country, ranked 17th overall in the 2009 U.S. News and World Report top medical schools for primary care and research.^[2] Its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences is among the top 10 percent of all graduate schools in the United States.

History

The school was formed in 1900 in Dallas, Texas by a small group of physicians who aimed to improve medical practice in North Texas. Originally called the University of Dallas Medical Department, the school opened its doors October 30, 1900, with 81 students. In 1903, an alliance with Baylor University in Waco was formed and the name changed to Baylor University College of Medicine.

By 1918, Baylor University College of Medicine was the only private medical school in Texas. The M.D. Anderson Foundation invited Baylor University College to join the newly formed Texas Medical Center in 1943. The College opened in the medical center on July 12, 1943 in a converted Sears, Roebuck & Co. building, with 131 students. four years later, the College moved into its present site in The Roy and Lillie Cullen Building, the first building completed in the Texas Medical Center.

In 1948, Michael E. DeBakey joined the faculty as chair of the Department of Surgery, and the following year, The Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences was established. The College's rise in prominence began in the 1950s when Dr. DeBakey's innovative surgical techniques garnered international attention. In the 1960s, the college underwent its first major expansion.

In 1969, the College separated from Baylor University and became an independent institution, which allowed it access to federal research funding. The institution's name changed to Baylor College of Medicine. That same year, the College entered into an agreement with the state legislature to double its class size in order to increase the number of physicians in Texas. The agreement remains in place today.

Development

Baylor College of Medicine opened The Baylor Clinic on June 29, 2005 and was in the process of building a state-of-the-art integrated hospital and clinic, to be called The Baylor Hospital, which was slated to open sometime in 2011. Now due to endowment losses of 35% and operating budget deficits, the College has decided to indefinitely postpone construction. The outer shell of the hospital will be completed, but the interiors will not.

Discussions of a merger between Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine are currently underway.^[3] However, one major difficulty in the merger is the handling of Baylor's fiscal crisis.

Medical school

Baylor College of Medicine was ranked 17th overall in the 2009 U.S. News and World Report top medical schools for primary care and 17th for research. Each year around 172 medical students join the medical school, about 75% of whom are Texas residents. For entering medical students in 2007, the average undergraduate GPA was 3.82 and the average MCAT score was 34.5, making it one of the top ten medical schools in the country when measured by matriculants statistics. Baylor College of Medicine is the only private medical school in the southwest region of the United States, and has the lowest tuition of all private medical schools in the United States.^{[citation needed]} Baylor is one of the few medical schools in the United States that is structured with an accelerated 1.5 year preclinical curriculum (the others are Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

Graduate school

In 2005 BCM ranked 13th in terms of research funding from the National Institutes of Health,^[4] and its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences ranked 22nd for best Ph.D. program in the biological sciences (2007). Additionally, several individual departments earn particularly heavy NIH funding, receiving several "Top Ten" rankings by the NIH in 2005:^[5]

• No. 1: Molecular & Cellular Biology;^[6] Molecular and Human Genetics;^[7] and Pediatrics^[8]
• No. 2: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology^[9]
• No. 8: Neurosciences^[10]

100 students join the graduate program each year, of which one-half were women and one-third were graduates from foreign schools. The average graduate student GPA is 3.5 and the average GRE score is above the 70th percentile.

Many departments of the graduate school collaborate with Rice University and other institutions within the Texas Medical Center. Currently, 489 graduate students are enrolled in one of the fourteen different PhD programs. These programs are:

Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) is ranked among the top Schools of medicine in the United States.

• Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
• Immunology
• Molecular and Cellular Biology
• Molecular and Human Genetics
• Molecular Physiology & Biophysics
• Molecular Virology & Microbiology
• Neuroscience
• Pharmacology
• Cardiovascular Sciences
• Cell and Molecular Biology
• Developmental biology
• Structural and Computational Biology & Molecular Biophysics
• Translational Biology & Molecular Medicine
• Clinical Scientist Training Program

Biomedical research

Baylor College of Medicine has dedicated more than 800,000 square feet (70,000 m²) of its space for laboratory research, and is adding another 322,000 in the next few years. According to the National Science Foundation 2004, BCM ranks sixth in R&D spending in the life sciences, behind UCSF, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, University of Washington, and University of Pennsylvania.^{[citation needed]} Housed within this research space are exceptional centers and facilities, such as:

• BCM's Human Genome Sequencing Center
• The Human Neuroimaging Lab
• The Cancer Center
• The Center for Cell and Gene Therapy
• The Huffington Center on Aging
• The Influenza Research Center
• The National Center for Macromolecular Imaging
• The W.M. Keck Center for Computational Biology
• The Epigenomics Data Analysis and Coordination Center
• State-of-the-art core facilities, including microscopy, DNA sequencing, microarray, and protein sequencing
• One of the largest transgenic mouse facilities in the country

Graduate Program in Nurse Anesthesia

Baylor College of Medicine houses one of the top-ranked Nurse Anesthesia programs in the country. Currently accepting 14 students per year, applicants are among the brightest minds in critical care nursing, each possessing experience in a variety of intense settings. The program is academically front-loaded with students beginning coursework mid-summer and completing 12 months of comprehensive didactic preparation prior to immersion into clinical anesthesia training.

Clinical anesthesia experiences are gained within the distinguished Texas Medical Center, and include an array of settings, such as pediatric, obstetric, cardiovascular, and trauma anesthesia. The clinical phase of the program is 18 months in length, and enables graduates to enter practice as proficient, well- equipped anesthetists. Additionally, throughout their training, students are given ample opportunities to enhance non-clinical skills, such as leadership and research, with nationally-recognized faculty members.

Physician Assistant program

Baylor College of Medicine is also home to a Physician Assistant (PA) program. Thirty PA students are accepted each year. For PA students entering in 2004, the average GPA was 3.70 and the average GRE score was 1169 verbal/quantitative and 4.9 analytical. Baylor College of Medicine ranked 7th in the 2007 U.S. News and World Report rankings for Physician Assistant schools. The overall passing rate for all graduates of the PA Program on the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination is 97 percent with a 100 percent pass rate for the past eight years.

Residency training

Baylor College of Medicine offers residency training in a wide variety of specialties. Notable departments at the college include the Department of Pediatrics, led by world-renowned pediatrician Ralph Feigin until 2003 and the Department of Surgery led by Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, the world-renowned cardiothoracic surgeon, and chaired by Dr. F. Charles Brunicardi, the Debakey/Bard Professor of Surgery.^[11]

Hospital affiliation

BCM is affiliated with many of the hospitals that make the Texas Medical Center the largest medical center in the world. These include:

• Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston
• Texas Children's Hospital
• Ben Taub General Hospital
• Quentin Mease Community Hospital
• St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital
• Memorial Hermann- The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research
• The Menninger Clinic, which moved from Kansas in 2002.
• The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
• The Methodist Hospital

Cooperating Patient Care Institutions:

• Community Health Centers
• Cullen Bayou Place
• DePelchin Children's Center
• Houston Child Guidance Center
• Jewish Family Service Cancer Center
• Kelsey-Seybold Clinic
• Park Plaza Hospital
• Quentin Mease Hospital
• Seven Acres Jewish Geriatric Center
• Houston Shriners Hospital (orthopedic)
• Thomas Street AIDS Clinic
• The Woman's Hospital of Texas

While The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center is affiliated with the University of Texas, its faculty and trainees may be affiliated with either Baylor or the University of Texas medical school in Houston, which is located across the street from Baylor. Methodist Hospital had been Baylor's primary private teaching hospital for many decades. Baylor and Methodist dissolved some of their connections during a conflict in 2004 for reasons that seem to revolve around a planned ambulatory care center and ownership of the physicians' private practices. Methodist and Baylor retain a number of important affiliations and Baylor medical students continue to rotate through The Methodist Hospital during some rotations. In the meantime, Baylor has strengthened its ties to MD Anderson, leading, for example, to the recent decision for MD Anderson's chairman of neurosurgery to also be chair at Baylor.

Baylor is currently building its own 600 bed not-for-profit hospital within the Texas Medical Center³ on the McNair Campus of Baylor College of Medicine. The new Baylor Clinic & Hospital (BCH) will give Baylor more control over its clinical mission and streamline the clinical use of research advances. An important facet of the construction of this hospital revolves around the application of personalized, genomic medicine in conjunction with more traditional patient care.^[12] This effort will be supported by the strength of Baylor's Human and Molecular Genetics Department, currently ranked number one in the country.

Because of economic concerns and lack of funding, school trustees plan to temporarily suspend construction of the hospital. The construction of the hospital’s interior will be delayed after the exterior is completed in 2010. The cost of construction has exceeded initial budget expectations by over 200 million dollars. The hospital construction has been a financial burden to Baylor, contributing significant debt to the school and an obstacle to a potential merger with Rice University.^[13][14]

Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative

The Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative (BIPAI) (http://bayloraids.org) at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital was established in 1996, and has rapidly become the world's largest university-based program dedicated to global pediatric and family HIV/AIDS care and treatment, health professional training and clinical research. Baylor constructed and opened the world's two largest centers for the care and treatment of HIV-infected children and families, the Romanian-American Children's Center in Constanta, Romania in 2001, and the Botswana-Baylor Children's Clinical Center of Excellence in Gaborone, Botswana in 2003. These centers have transformed the care and treatment of pediatric HIV/AIDS in the two countries, making Romania and Botswana two of a precious few countries worldwide where children are at least proportionately represented among those accessing HIV/AIDS care and treatment. BIPAI has replicated these successes in Uganda, Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi, and Burkina Faso, where it has entered into partnership with the Ministries of Health to scale up pediatric HIV/AIDS care and treatment, and build and open new Children's Clinical Centers of Excellence.

BIPAI also has created the Pediatric AIDS Corps; a model program to place up to 250 American pediatricians and infectious disease specialists in its African centers to vastly expand capacity for pediatric HIV/AIDS care and treatment and health professional training. Major funders of BIPAI's activities include NIH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, Abbott Laboratories, and numerous private and corporate foundations.

Notable physicians and researchers

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completion. You can help by expanding it with sourced additions.

• Huda Zoghbi — NAS member, Howard Hughes Medical Institute scientist, award-winning neuropsychiatrist, Director of Jan an Duncan Neurological Research Institute
• John Barnhill — Chief of the Consultation-Liaison Service at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
• Hugo Bellen — noted developmental biologist
• Malcolm Brenner Ph.D., — Director, Center for Cell and Gene Therapy
• William "Bill" R. Brinkley; American cell biologist and early contributor to discovery of mitotic spindle apparatus
• Mohammad Athari, M.D. — Neurologist and founder of Universal MRI and Diagnostics, Inc.
• Leroy Chiao, Astronaut and Commander of the International Space Station, Chairman of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute User Panel, and Co-investigator for the Advanced Diagnostic Ultrasound in Microgravity Project
• C. Thomas Caskey — American internist and prominent medical geneticist and biomedical entrepreneur.
• David C. Hilmers — Former astronaut and current professor of medicine and pediatrics.^[15]
• Michael E. DeBakey — award-winning cardiovascular surgeon
• David Eagleman — neuroscientist and writer
• William J. Klish, influential pediatrician
• H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. — American philosopher
• Ralph Feigin — Former President, Baylor College of Medicine; Chief of Pediatrics and President of Texas Children's Hospital; author, Textbook of Pediatric Infectious Diseases^[16]
• Roger Guillemin — Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine (1977)^[17]
• Read Montague — Director of the College's Human Neuroimaging Laboratory^[18]
• Andrew W. Schally — Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine (1977)^[19]
• Peter G. Traber — President Emeritus of Baylor College of Medicine.^[20]
• Denton Cooley — founder of the Texas Heart Institute and world-renowned cardiovascular surgeon. Carried out the first successful implantation of an artificial heart.
• O. H. Frazier — Heart surgeon who has performed over 1,000 transplants.^[21]
• Michael J. Reardon — Internationally known heart surgeon who developed first successful cardiac auto transplantation for cardiac sarcoma.
• F. Charles Brunicardi, MD — Chair, DeBakey Department of Surgery and Editor-in-Chief of Schwartz's Principles of Surgery
• Brendan H Lee, MD, PhD — Professor, Molecular and Human Genetics, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
• James Lovelock — Former professor, chemist, proponent of Gaia hypothesis.
• Richard A. Gibbs, PhD — pioneering geneticist.
• Leslie A. Geddes, PhD — PhD, pioneering biomedical engineer and inventor.
• Huntly D. Millar — founder and owner of Millar Instruments, Inc., worldwide distributor of catheter-tip pressure sensors.
• David Poplack, MD — Director, Texas Children's Cancer Center, Professor of Pediatrics.^[22]
• Rex D. Russell (1941-2009), Fort Smith, Arkansas, radiologist and author of What the Bible Says About Healthy Living (1996).^[23]

References

External links

Houston portal

• Baylor College of Medicine Homepage
• Graduate Programs at Baylor College of Medicine
• History of Baylor College of Medicine
• History of the Office of President at BCM

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