The Tulane University School of Medicine is the medical school of Tulane University and is located in the Medical District of the New Orleans Central Business District in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States.
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History
The school was founded in 1834 as the Medical College of Louisiana and is the fifteenth oldest medical school in the United States and the second oldest in the Deep South. The first classes were held in 1835 at a variety of locations, including Charity Hospital and the Strangers Unitarian Church.
Late 1800s to present
The first permanent building for the school was constructed in the French Quarter in 1844. In 1893, the school moved to Canal Street in the Richardson building, and then shortly after to the Hutchinson Building, also on Canal. Finally, in 1930, the school moved to its current location—the Hutchinson Memorial Building—on Tulane Avenue, next to Charity Hospital.
In 2007, the school acquired the Murphy Oil Building on S. Robertson by donation. The Murphy building houses the DeBakey Educational Center, Leone Learning Center, a simulation center, a student lounge with a gym, and several administrative offices.
Admissions and research
The school has highly competitive admissions, accepting only 175 medical students from more than 12,000 applications. About 40 percent of the students in each class are concurrently enrolled as candidates for the Master of Public Health degree in the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. It is estimated that Tulane University has graduated more than 40 percent of all physicians in the U.S. who have earned both M.D. and master of public health degrees.
In 2001, the Tulane Center for Gene Therapy started as the first major center in the U.S. to focus on research using adult stem cells.
Today, the medical school is but one part of the Tulane University Health Sciences Center, which includes the School of Medicine, the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, the University Health Service, the Tulane National Primate Research Center, the U.S.-Japan Biomedical Research Laboratories, and the Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research. Most components of the Health Sciences Center are located in the heart of New Orleans, in the medical district that comprises Tulane facilities and the LSU/Charity Hospital center just north of the New Orleans Central Business District. It comprises 23 academic departments: Anesthesiology; Dermatology; Family & Community Medicine; the Deming Department of Medicine, which includes the sections of Cardiology, Clinical Immunology, Allergy, & Rheumatology, Division of Biomedical Informatics and Genomics, Endocrinology & Metabolism, Gastroenterology, General Internal Medicine & Geriatrics, Hematology and Medical Oncology, Infectious Diseases, Nephrology & Hypertension, Pulmonary Diseases, Critical Care and Environmental Medicine; Neurology; Neurosurgery; Obstetrics and Gynecology; Ophthalmology; Orthopaedics; Otolaryngology; Pathology and Laboratory Medicine; Pediatrics; Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences; Radiation Oncology; Radiology; Surgery; Urology; Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; Microbiology and Immunology; Pathology and Laboratory Medicine; Pharmacology; Physiology; and Structural and Cellular Biology.
On August 31, 2009, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal along with Tulane President Scott Cowen and Louisiana State University System President John V. Lombardi approved a plan to establish both schools as board members for the future $1.1 billion University Medical Center New Orleans. Ground was broken in 2011 and the hospital opened on August 1, 2015.
Facilities
Tulane's medical library, The Rudolph Matas Health Sciences Library, is named after the renowned Professor of Surgery at Tulane University Rudolph Matas, despite the journal Science stating of Matas that "his colleagues have felt for many years that by consulting him they could extract more information from his encyclopedic mind than they could obtain from a visit to a library."
The Tulane Center for Advanced Medical Simulation and Team Training gives medical students, residents, practicing physicians, nurses, technicians, first responders and other healthcare providers the opportunity to learn and perfect the latest techniques and best practices for patient care and safety. The Tulane Sim Center features 14,000 square feet (1,300 m2) of simulation and meeting space for hands-on training, instruction and skills assessment including an emergency room, intensive care unit, operating room, labor & delivery room, four hospital patient rooms, four office exam rooms, and a nursing station. The Tulane University: Standardized Patient Center through Foundations in Medicine is the first to pilot low-cost virtual reality through Google Cardboard for first-year medical students.
Notable alumni and faculty
James Andrews, M.D., Former house staff, orthopedics (1969–1972), internationally known orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist. Founder of American Sports Medicine Institute, member of the Sports medicine Committee of the United States Olympic Committee. team physician for a number of professional and collegiate teams. Surgeon to numerous professional athletes including Jack Nicklaus, Michael Jordan, Emmitt Smith, John Smoltz, Brett Favre, Drew Brees, Troy Aikman, Charles Barkley, Bo Jackson, and many others.
Charles Cassidy (C.C.) Bass, M.D., 1899, pioneer researcher on malaria, hookworm, and dental caries; dean, Tulane School of Medicine, 1922-40 (Tulane's Golden Years).
Elizabeth Bass, M.D., 1911, one of the first women faculty at the medical school, three years before women were admitted as students
Stanhope Bayne-Jones, Military Physician and Academic, noted for his contributions to the link between smoking and cancer.
Cyril Y. Bowers, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Medicine
George E. Burch, M.D., 1933, internationally known cardiologist; Editor, American Heart Journal. 1959-1982; chairman of the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Panel on Cardiovascular Diseases and chairman of the advisory committee to the U.S. Army on Environmental Medicine and Physiology involved in successfully sending the first two chimpanzees into space, continuing as a consultant to NASA
Alston Callahan M.D., 1933, pioneer in the field of reconstructive eye surgery; established the Eye Foundation Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama; instrumental in starting the Ophthalmology Department at the University of Alabama School of Medicine and served as first chairman
Jay Cavanaugh, Ph.D, 1994, member, California State Board of Pharmacy (1980–90), director, American Alliance for Medical Cannabis, 2001
Affiliations
Tulane Medical Center
University Medical Center New Orleans
Ochsner Medical Center
Veterans Affairs Medical Center
Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine