Martin J. Blaser, M.D.
Chair, Department of Medicine

The past five years have been a period of growth and change for the Department of Medicine at NYU School of Medicine. I trained here some years ago, and it was thrilling for me to come back home in 2000 to head the department and continue the tradition of strong leadership and educational excellence established by my predecessors, including John Wykoff, William Tillett, Lewis Thomas, and Saul J. Farber.

My goals for the department five years ago were to rejuvenate and modernize it and to create Centers of Excellence in each sector of our three-pronged mission:

• to provide the finest patient care possible
• to teach the practice of medicine to the next generations of students and house staff
• to conduct innovative research that will expand the frontiers of medical science

Working together with the more than 1,200 faculty members (about 330 of them full-time), nearly 300 residents and fellows, and several hundred researchers, nurses, administrators, and staff who make up the department, we have made rapid strides toward achieving those goals.

With the appointment of new Chiefs of Service and Associate Chairs, eight new Academic Division Directors, three new Firm Chiefs, and a Departmental Administrator, and with the creation of a new governing Executive Committee, the Department of Medicine now has the infrastructure it needs to continue its trajectory.

In addition to filling new leadership positions, we have recruited many new faculty members to our voluntary and full-time staff. These faculty include medical doctors and scientists, whose work ranges from largely clinical to mostly investigative, but who all share a deep commitment to the academic mission of the department.

Working with the Dean of the School of Medicine, Dr. Robert M. Glickman, and with the heads of our teaching hospitals - Bellevue, Tisch, the VA Medical Center New York, North Shore University Hospital, Lenox Hill, Hospital for Joint Diseases, NYU Downtown, and Gouverneur Healthcare Services - the Department of Medicine continues to acquire substantial new space and resources for our teaching, research, clinical, and administrative endeavors:

• The new Jean and David Blechman Cardiac & Vascular Center consolidates a wide array of outpatient services in one location and complements the molecular cardiology program led by Division Director Dr. Glenn I. Fishman.
• Bellevue's Critical Care Pavilion, nearly an acre in size, is already a national model for crisis care, and the I. M. Pei-designed Ambulatory Care Pavilion, opening in spring 2005, will offer state-of-the-art facilities for outpatient care.
• Scheduled to open in 2006, the Joan and Joel Smilow Research Center will house 100,000 square feet of cutting-edge laboratory space, augmenting the research capabilities of the nationally renowned Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine.

I have long been interested in narrative, in how medical cases are conceptualized and presented. One of the requirements now for students to pass their core clerkship in Medicine is to write an essay about a patient, focusing on any aspect of the case. When we started the program, I expected that most of the essays would be quite scholarly, but instead the vast majority have been highly personal, and overwhelming in their beauty and poignancy.

That same interest in narrative also led to the establishment of the semiannual Bellevue Literary Review, which has developed into a nationally recognized forum for conversations in medicine and medical humanities.

Another source of pride for me and for the department as a whole is that NYU medical students are liking what they see here and are choosing to specialize in Internal Medicine as a profession at about twice the national rate. As will be evident in the pages that follow, the Department of Medicine is building on an extraordinary legacy and has great potential. Clearly we are an institution on the move!

Martin J. Blaser, M.D.
Frederick H. King Professor of Internal Medicine
Chair, Department of Medicine
Professor of Microbiology
Martin.Blaser@med.nyu.edu
Blaser Lab Group website