WHAT IT MEANS FOR STUDENTS AT UA COM-P

Imagine that it’s the spring of 2020. Yes, you and your class have successfully graduated from the College of Medicine and are in the midst of enjoying your residency. It’s fun, isn’t it? Many of you will have started practice after completing your residency, having either remained here for training or returned to Arizona. Perhaps you’ve joined our faculty and are a part of Banner Health. The class that entered medical school in 2016 will soon graduate and many will begin their residencies in the new tower and the institutes at Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix (BUMCP).

Several years ago, while still a student (keep imagining that it’s 2020), you were able to see all of the construction and other activities at BUMCP. You took care of patients with your team in the “old” tower (the one with the portholes but without convenient stairways, enough private rooms, or sufficient teaching spaces, but it was “home” to many of us). You witnessed the new tower going up—17 floors! Your clinical rotations and electives often took place in the new institutes that were being developed. Each of them had multiple centers that housed ambulatory clinics, advanced practices, and procedures and research. You were able to enjoy a setting that previous students had not been able to experience, unless they did away rotations. Many of the additional specialty services the centers provided were able to advance clinical care that heretofore was unavailable in the Phoenix metro area. Each institute brought new faculty involved in clinical practice, education, and research. As a student, this broadened your knowledge of diagnosis and therapy that prepared you to care for patients in a primary care setting, or it may have sparked your interest to train in a specialty that you never even considered. On the business side of medicine, you saw that quality care and patient safety were emphasized and that this care did not bring increased cost but instead could provide improved outcomes for the patient and save money for the hospital. Real-time data analysis assisted in your clinical decision making and pharmacogenomics allowed you and your team to give the right therapy to the right patient in the right dose at the right time. The data at your fingertips (keyboard or smartphone) were derived from the experience of a large hospital system, Banner Health, and analyzed by the faculty. This is the excitement that the affiliation of a growing medical school and large university combined with a top-tier healthcare delivery system derives from its relationship. Most exciting is that you are truly practicing 21st-century medicine in all settings!

The listings below demonstrate where training of students and residents currently occurs and where it will occur in the coming years. You are already a part of the future!

Alan I. Leibowitz, MD

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Dr. Leibowitz is professor of medicine and associate dean for graduate medical education at The University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix. He is the chief academic officer for Banner Arizona and the designated institutional official at Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix. He is one of the founding chairs at COM-P (internal medicine) and is well-known to most of the faculty and staff. Prior to his current position, assumed in 2007, he was the internal medicine program director at BUMCP. Before coming to Phoenix he served as associate dean for student affairs at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa. He is board-certified in internal medicine and gastroenterology.

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