...innovative training program in the field of orthopaedics.
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African-Americans represent approximately 13 percent of the population, yet less than three percent of the country’s orthopaedic specialists are African-American.
This is a disturbing statistic because it shows that many young minority students aren’t being guided into a rewarding and growing medical profession. Just as concerning, the lack of black doctors contributes to a health disparity among minority patients, who may have difficulty communicating with or even fully trusting a doctor who doesn’t look like them.
University Hospitals Case Medical Center is working to change that – by encouraging diversity in orthopaedics, a medical specialty where minority doctors are in high demand. a medical specialty where minority doctors are in high demand.
“Having more minority doctors will help to dispel the lingering mistrust of the medical system among African-Americans,” says Dr. Edgar B. Jackson, Jr., chief of staff emeritus and a senior advisor at University Hospitals.
Jackson says that among older patients, some of the mistrust is grounded in the infamous “Tuskegee Experiment” in which a group of doctors, from 1932 until 1972, left syphilis untreated in nearly 400 mostly poor black men to study the effects of the disease.
“Among younger blacks,” Jackson says, “that mistrust may be linked to a general wariness of the medical system and technology overall. Whatever the reason, some people of color often hesitate to seek treatment from a physician not of their race.”
To effectively address this situation, University Hospitals, funded by the Saint
Luke’s Foundation, created the Timothy
Stephens, Jr., MD Orthopaedic Fellowship, an initiative that will
allow an African-American medical student to study orthopaedics for a year
in The University Hospitals Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, gaining valuable experience and exposure.
Named in honor of Dr. Timothy Stephens, Jr., the first African-American orthopaedic surgeon in Ohio, the fellowship will give one third-year medical student per year the chance to gain an advantage in the extraordinarily competitive field of orthopaedic surgery and musculoskeletal science.
Fellowship honors local trailblazer
The fellowship is named in honor of Timothy L. Stephens Jr., MD, the first African-American orthopaedic surgeon in Ohio and the first African-American orthopaedic attending physician in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at UH Case Medical Center.
Dr. Stephens
also served as chairman of orthopaedic surgery and chief of staff at the Saint
Luke’s Medical Center. Now retired and living in Shaker Heights, Dr.
Stephens is known as a renaissance surgeon whose career is an exemplary blend
of clinical practice, leadership, teaching and public service.
"This Fellowship will go a long way toward improving access to hands-on clinical and research experience for underrepresented minorities considering the field of orthopaedics,” said Denise San Antonio Zeman, president and CEO of the Saint Luke’s Foundation. “We couldn’t be more pleased to honor Dr. Stephens’ contributions to the field by encouraging promising African-American medical students to follow in his footsteps."
How competitive is the field? The hundreds of applicants for the mere half-dozen orthopaedic residency positions at Case Western Reserve University Medical School is a perfect indication of just how tough it is to break into this specialty.
“Not only are there fewer minorities applying, but then to get through that
kind of competition is even more difficult,” says Jackson.
What accounts for the low numbers of applicants?
Dr. Richard E. Grant, a Professor of Orthopaedic surgery UH Case Medical Center and
nationally respected clinical educator, says minorities face especially tough
hurdles, not all of them financial.
Jackson credits Grant with having the idea for the fellowship to help minority
students.
Grant explains further, “We thought that if you bring a medical student here and they work in a competitive environment for a full year, they’ll get a huge jump… because most medical students don’t receive that much exposure to orthopaedics – some of the clinical rotations may afford only two weeks – whereas here we’re providing a medical student entering into his or her third year and unsual opportunity to spend one whole year with us, immersed in the culture of a world class academic program that covers all Orthopaedic subspecialties and an impressive array of molecular and biomechanical basic science research.”
Fellowship year full of benefits
Spending that year at UH Case Medical Center will be beneficial to the student in other ways also, as Dr. Grant explains:
“If you take an African-American medical student and you bring them from one (minority) environment into a competitive majority program like UH Case Medical Center is, they have to get used to the culture. They have time to figure it out, because it’s going to be a different culture. The competition’s going to be different.”
Through the fellowship, the sponsored student will have the opportunity to see how the residency program works and what will be required of him/her on a daily basis, so the student will be even more prepared to be a successful orthopaedic resident. Just as important, the culture of a competitive surgical subspecialty will become familiar territory.
Of the program, Dr. Grant says, “I don’t think it’s
ever been done in the United States. We’re hoping that if it our
ideas succeed here, and we develop the sort of ‘super candidate’ for
a residency, then other major academic centers and subspecialties will
duplicate our design and contribute to the pipeline.”
To find those potential “super candidates,” the fellowship is reaching out across the country – writing medical school deans, orthopaedic department chairs, minority affairs directors, and minority orthopaedic associations – seeking the best and the brightest.
“The only thing we haven’t done is to go into national advertisement, which is a second phase of what we plan to do,” says Grant.
Dr. Stephens, the Cleveland native for whom the fellowship was named, says the fellowship will help begin to meet the need for “culturally competent” and minority orthopaedic physicians across the country.
He says the field is an exciting one for qualified minority specialists:
“Thirty percent of the visits to a physician deal with the musculoskeletal system. That creates a large population that the orthopaedic physicians have to see. And the advances in orthopaedics have been tremendous,” Dr. Stephens said.
The grant from the Saint Luke’s Foundation funds the initiative for 10 years.
“It’s just wonderful,” says Jackson. “It gives us enough time to really make sure this works.”
| Posted by Kim St. John-Stevenson on Nov 18, 2009, 9:38 am |
| The inaugural fellow, Havalee Henry, a medical student at the University of
Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, was named in the late summer of 2009. Havalee is featured in University Hospital's 2009 Annual Report to the Community and Report on Philanthropy linked here http://www.uhhospitals.org/portals/6/docs/About_UH/Publications/2009annualreport.pdf |
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