Issue 119 - November 14th, 2017
Making the Rounds with Founding Dean Dr. Barbara Atkinson

WELCOME BACK DEAN ATKINSON!

Dr. Barbara Atkinson returned Nov. 1 after leaving this summer on extended medical leave. She is grateful for the care she received at University Medical Center, which serves as the main clinical teaching center for Southern Nevada's first public medical school. A member of the prestigious National Academy of Medicine, she looks forward to 2021, when the UNLV School of Medicine graduates its first class of physicians.

Barbara at podium

How are you feeling ?
I'm much better than I was -- I still have a ways to go before I gain my strength but I'm doing great."

What was the first thing you did upon returning to work?
I went around and talked to everybody. We added so many employees over the summer, there were many I had not met. I had a great time meeting them and I got to see what everybody was working on.

Did you miss coming into the office every day?
Yes. To me, being here is my pleasure.

Tell us about the doctors and staff who cared for you ?
Most of them were UNLV physicians. I have a strong appreciation for how the doctors were able to do what needed to be done for me to get better. I was at UMC and I got incredible care from everyone.   The nurses were extremely important, the physical therapists unbelievable. Occupational therapists, respiratory therapists, the people who cared for the rooms --  all of those individuals come together as a team to help you recover from something like this. I'm very grateful and it's given me a new perspective.

Were you able to keep up on issues at the medical school ?
I certainly was.  I had lots of visitors who came to see me either as doctors or as friends. They kept me informed on what was happening. It was really a pleasure to hear about the medical students and to see them start, and see how they did so well in their course work. Now, to see them day by day, it's an amazing experience.
 
Dean Atkinson at White Coat ceremony 2017
Did your time away give you a different perspective on life?
Yes, it made me decide that I have to be more careful about how I spend my time and use it very carefully. Because there's only so much that can be done in one day. I think I was trying to fit in more than I should have. So I'm going to be more careful with that.

What are your thoughts about having accessible, quality medical care?
I think UMC has been underappreciated as a public hospital in Las Vegas. People were always complaining about how much money they lost and not really understanding what level of care they were giving to patients.  It's interesting now to see how well they are doing in the current healthcare insurance environment. It really has been important to them, and important to the populations in Las Vegas that really need medical care. I think the unfortunate shooting on Oct 1st was really one of the first times the general public in Las Vegas recognized how good the hospital was.

Now that you're back, what are some of your immediate goals?
My immediate goals are to help raise money to start the medical education building, that's a really big one. We have an accreditation goal next year because we have to apply again to get our medical students in the next stage of accreditation and that's a whole year process. You have to write a giant 500-page self-study and do a strategic plan, so we are starting on that around the 1st of January. We have a major affiliation agreement that is due to finish by the end of June, so we have a lot of work to do to get that finalized. We need to move forward on the medical education building because we also want to increase the class size, so to do that - we have get the building built to have room for all the students. Also, we need to recruit more faculty and expand the number of residency programs we offer. And we want to expand the services we can provide with physicians and members of the clinical care team.

How do you go about convincing highly regarded physicians to move to Las Vegas and join the UNLV School of Medicine?
What I mostly focus on is hiring people who want to build a program. So maybe their specialty is to treat diabetes and they want to build the best diabetes care program for patients. We can provide the support. People really like being able to build something of their own so they can memorialize what they do.

What is the first thing you think about in the morning?
I think about how the school is going to grow and what needs to happen to make it grow. Often that means raising money to build a program or help support a program, including the autism program that started a year ago. In that short time we've been so successful we now have a long waiting list and I'm really sorry about that but it's because there is such a need. But now we know what we have to do to make an even stronger program. That's only one of a multitude of programs both educational ones and clinical ones. We want to build the research program as well, so we're starting to apply for NIH (National Institutes of Health) grants and grow that. But we can only do that to the extent that we can invest in people.

What would you say to people who wanted to reach out to you but were afraid?
Oh, so many people did reach out to me. I got cards and letters and flowers and things to eat, and wonderful support from so many friends. I just appreciate everything they did to help me and I appreciate knowing how caring the city of Las Vegas is. It showed very much at the time of the shooting. The love and support that we gave the people after that terrible tragedy was amazing...and they did the same for me as an individual. This is a new city for me, I've been here just under four years and it is incredible how many friends we've made in that time.
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