On Student Research Day, a chance to share observations and conclusions

Three years ago, when Jacqueline C. Dolev signed up for a course to improve her clinical observation skills, she didn’t expect to spend class time in an art museum—nor, for that matter, to find the topic of her thesis in the exercise. But both things happened, and in April Dolev was standing in the lobby of the Jane Ellen Hope Building explaining her research to those attending Student Research Day.

Her project, “Enhancing Medical Observational Skills through Fine Arts: A Randomized Controlled Study,” was a scientific evaluation of the course, taught by dermatology professor Irwin M. Braverman, M.D. ’55, HS ’56, and staff at the Yale Center for British Art.

Dolev assessed students’ written descriptions of photographs from before and after the course and had them perform a visual search task. “The students who took the course were much better in their descriptive ability than the control group,” she said while standing next to her display amid the buzz of the poster session. “They learned to look at the photographs of medical disorders for both global attributes and details.” The control group, on the other hand, was more haphazard in its descriptions and more likely to see either the big picture or fine detail, but not both.

Dolev was among 50 medical, public health and M.D./Ph.D. students presenting work at the school’s 15th annual scientific poster session on April 20. Thesis topics ranged from the epidemiology of tuberculosis in Moscow from 1906 to 1936, to the role of cytokines and chemokines in leishmaniasis, to the role of religion and spirituality in the care of patients with HIV.

Although the poster session is a relatively new tradition at Yale, the thesis is an old one, dating to at least 1839, when first mention of the requirement is made in the medical school Bulletin. According to Director of Student Research John N. Forrest Jr., M.D., HS ’67, Yale is the only medical school to require all students to write a thesis based on original research.

Has the nature of the thesis changed much? Not according to Braverman, leader of the observation course, Dolev’s advisor and a 1955 graduate of the School of Medicine. Braverman’s own thesis, published 46 years ago, was on “microglial response in West Nile virus encephalitis,” a topic that would have a good deal of resonance in New Haven in 1999 when the virus appeared in the United States.

Students today pursue the same types of topics that they did in the 1950s, Braverman said. “Then, it ran the gamut of whatever was cutting-edge science—proteins and biochemistry for the most part—to the history of medicine, social topics and psychiatry,” he said. “It’s the same today. The thesis reflects what’s going on in science.”

The scheduled speaker at the 14th Annual Farr Lecture, Paul Greengard, M.D., Ph.D., who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on signal transduction in the nervous system, had to bow out after he broke his leg during a trip to Japan. Replacing Greengard, who taught psychiatry and pharmacology at Yale from 1958 to 1983, was Richard P. Lifton, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the Department of Genetics.

A quarter-century ago, Lifton said, there were virtually no tools to link genetics to the practice of medicine. Now, the human genome has created a revolution in medicine. “We are only beginning to see the outlines of where that will lead us; the future impact promises to be extraordinary.”

—Michael Fitzsousa

Exuberance rules the day as residency placements are revealed

Even before noon on March 22, it was clear that the crowd gathering outside the mailroom at Harkness Dormitory was smaller than in years past. With more students taking a fifth year for research or other activities, the original class of 106 was whittled down to 79 by Commencement this spring and five of the 79 chose to pursue activities other than a residency.

Just the same, the smaller group made a large-enough stir. A few minutes after noon, as students came out of the mailroom clutching letters, screams and tears of joy erupted. Anthony Lemaire danced around the hallway next to the mailroom with third-year student Kate Lally. In the embrace, Lally said, “I lost a shoe and an earring. It was overwhelming.” Lemaire was headed for Duke University Medical Center, his first choice, for a residency in surgery.

Melissa Lee got on her cell phone to tell her brother and father in New York City that she’d be going to the Harvard Combined Medicine/Pediatrics Program. “They were hoping I would stay on the East Coast,” she said. Christopher James was thrilled to be going to New York Presbyterian Hospital-Cornell for a residency in neurosurgery. “It’s an up-and-coming program. It has a great reputation,” he said, noting personal reasons for choosing Cornell. “I’m from New York and I went to Cornell as an undergrad.”

As in previous years, the students’ greatest preference was for internal medicine—38 percent chose that field. Nationwide, the National Resident Matching Program reported a shift away from family practice positions among the 24,000 medical students who participated. Slightly fewer than half matched to a residency in one of the generalist disciplines—internal medicine, pediatrics and family practice. The Yale placements appear on the opposite page.

—John Curtis

2001 residency placements for Yale medical students

The Office of Student Affairs has provided the following list, which outlines the results of the National Resident Matching Program for Yale’s medical graduates. Some names appear twice because the graduate is entering a one-year program before beginning a specialty residency. The transitional designation is a one-year program with three-month rotations in different specialties.

CALIFORNIA

Alameda County Medical Center, Oakland
Matthew Gutierrez, transitional

Kaiser Permanente Medical Group, Santa Clara
Allen Chen, medicine

Saint Mary’s Medical Center, San Francisco
Artis Montague, medicine

Stanford University Programs
Jacqueline Dolev, internal medicine
Emily Finkelstein, internal medicine
Artis Montague, ophthalmology

University of California – Davis Medical Center, Sacramento
Andrea Ciaranello, internal medicine

University of California Medical Center – Los Angeles
Eon Shin, orthopaedics
Brian Woods, internal medicine

University of California – San Francisco
Sara Erickson, internal medicine
Jennifer Lucero, obstetrics and gynecology

COLORADO

University of Colorado School of Medicine, Denver
Lucy Budde, family practice

CONNECTICUT

Hospital of Saint Raphael, New Haven
Geoffrey Emerson, medicine
Brian Lester, medicine

Yale-New Haven Hospital
Esther Choo, medicine
Michael David, internal medicine
Oleg Drozhinin, medicine
Jonathan Erulkar, orthopaedics
Rockman Ferrigno, emergency medicine
Kira Giovanielli, medicine, dermatology
Avery Grauer, internal medicine
Sung Kim, medicine/primary
Pinar Kodaman, obstetrics and gynecology
Darren Lish, psychiatry
Gregory Merrell, orthopaedics
Dan Negoianu, internal medicine
Dena Rifkin, internal medicine
J. Mark Sloan, internal medicine
Benjamin Smith, medicine, radiation oncology
Andrew White, orthopaedics
Harry Yoon, internal medicine

GEORGIA

Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta
Michele Johnson, surgery, neurosurgery

HAWAII

University of Hawaii School of Medicine, Honolulu
M. Vaughn Emerson, medicine

ILLINOIS

McGaw Medical Center – Northwestern University, Chicago
Benson Yang, surgery, neurosurgery

University of Chicago Hospitals
Caroline Harada, internal medicine

IOWA

University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City
Kirk Clifford, orthopaedics

MARYLAND

Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
Patricia Moore, obstetrics and gynecology

Johns Hopkins University – Wilmer Eye Center, Baltimore
Geoffrey Emerson, ophthalmology
M. Vaughn Emerson, ophthalmology

MASSACHUSETTS

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston
Oleg Drozhinin, anesthesiology
Anna Paszczuk, internal medicine
John Yang, internal medicine

Boston Combined Pediatrics Program
Patty Birgeneau Prince, pediatrics/primary
Fabienne Bourgeois, pediatrics

Boston University Medical Center
Esther Choo, emergency medicine

Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston
Barbara Coren, internal medicine
Roger Fan, internal medicine
Melissa Fuchs, internal medicine
Ajay Maker, general surgery
Jessica Mega, internal medicine
Lamioko Pappoe, internal medicine

Harvard Combined Medicine/Pediatrics Program, Boston
Ami Bhatt, medicine/pediatrics
Melissa Lee, medicine/pediatrics

Harvard Medical School
Neal Chen, orthopaedics

Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
Garth Graham, internal medicine
Matthew Levine, general surgery
Daniel Wolf, psychiatry

MINNESOTA

Mayo Graduate School of Medicine, Rochester
Natalie Holt, surgery, urology

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Matthew Goodwin, general surgery

NEW JERSEY

UMDNJ – New Jersey Medical School, Newark
Ron Samet, internal medicine

NEW YORK

Albany Medical Center Hospital
Dinakar Shenbagamurthi, orthopaedics

Hospital for Special Surgery, New York
Benjamin Huffard, orthopaedics

Mount Sinai Hospital, New York
Joshua Gibson, internal medicine
Carmit Steren, obstetrics and gynecology

New York Presbyterian Hospital – Columbia
Winnie Au, diagnostic radiology
Ryan Davies, general surgery
Allison Stewart, pediatrics

New York Presbyterian Hospital – Cornell
Carl Crawford, internal medicine
Christopher James, surgery and neurosurgery

North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset
Joy Weinberg, medicine

St. Vincent’s Hospital, New York
Winnie Au, transitional

University of Rochester/Strong Memorial Hospital, Rochester
Hong Zhang, medicine, radiation oncology

NORTH CAROLINA

Duke University Medical Center, Durham
Stephenie Boykin, pediatrics
Anthony Lemaire, general surgery

OHIO

University Hospitals of Cleveland
Heidi Smith, pediatrics

OREGON

Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland
Samuel Kim, emergency medicine

PENNSYLVANIA

Albert Einstein Medical Center, Philadelphia
Daniel Wolf, transitional

Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Sharon Chekijian, general surgery

RHODE ISLAND

Rhode Island Hospital – Brown University, Providence
Brian Lester, dermatology

TEXAS

University of Texas – MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston
Allen Chen, radiation oncology

Wilford Hall Medical Center (Lackland AFB), San Antonio
Heather Yun, internal medicine

WASHINGTON

University of Washington Affiliated Hospitals, Seattle
Frederick Cobey, general surgery