University Medical Center

Your Academic Teaching Hospital

Teaching hospitals are environments in which medical knowledge evolves and new cures and treatments are found. They are places in which critical community services, such as trauma centers, stand ready. The mutual relationship between the medical school and the teaching hospital provides an environment in which cutting edge clinical care is delivered, significant medical advances are made, and the next generation of physicians is trained.

Educating Future Physicians

A strong medical school is not possible without a strong academic teaching hospital. Behind every life-saving procedure, miracle cure, and new health discovery lies a doctor or nurse teaching a resident everything he or she knows. Academic teaching hospitals serve as the training ground for the vast majority of new physicians and healthcare professionals. Resident physicians are doctors who, after completing medical school and an internship, choose to continue training in a specific area or specialty, such as OB/GYN, Family Practice or Surgery. Fellows are physicians who opt to expand their chosen specialty even further by participating in a fellowship program which typically lasts two to three years. Through residency and fellowship programs, requiring an additional three to eight years of dedication, new physician graduates gain the clinical experience and practical knowledge they need to become effective and highly qualified doctors.

Thomason has long served as a teaching hospital. As the university hospital for the new four- year Paul F. Foster School of Medicine, University Medical Center of El Paso’s role expands even further.

Each July, in teaching hospitals across the country, medical school graduates begin their residency and fellowship training programs. July of 2009 marked the first class of residents for the Paul F. Foster School of Medicine. More than 300 medical students from across the world applied for 40 coveted student positions. From those applicants, the brightest physicians were selected to begin their residency training in ten accredited programs: Ovestretrics & Gynecology, Pediatrics, Transitional, Radiology, Psychiatry, Family Medicine, Orthopedics, General Surgery, Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine.

El Paso Children’s Hospital

The new El Paso Children’s Hospital will play an equally important role as an academic teaching hospital. Children’s Hospitals train nearly 30% of all pediatricians and over half of all pediatric subspecialists, many of whom stay and practice in the community in which they trained. To a dramatically underserved community like El Paso, this means more pediatric doctors, better care and more choices.

Benefits of Patient Care in an Academic Medical Center

2008 Top 100 Hospital UMC El Paso’s high quality of nursing care has resulted in the prestigious 2008 Pathway to Excellence Award from the American Nurses Credentialing Center, a designation held by only 1 percent of all acute-care hospitals in the United States. Thomason is the only hospital in El Paso to have been named a Top 100 Hospital by Thomson Reuters. Academic teaching centers have a higher ratio of caregivers to patients. This team approach means that UMC patients reap the benefits of the perspective from many physicians who team up to provide optimal care with the most recent knowledge of medical research and scholarship available in their fields.

Discovering Tomorrow’s Cures

The integration of patient care with the best in medical education and research is the basis for much of what we take for granted in medicine today. As key centers of research, teaching hospitals are responsible for critical medical breakthroughs. From new approaches in prevention and diagnosis to successful treatments and cures, the advances pioneered at these institutions dramatically improve the health of our community. The list of medical firsts that were pioneered at America’s medical schools and teaching hospitals are long and distinguished. To name a few:

The development of coronary angioplasty,
The first pediatric trauma center
The development of artificial skin made from living human cells
The first human images with an MRI
The first live polio vaccine
The first successful bone marrow transplant
The first intensive care unit for newborns
The first human gene therapy for cystic fibrosis
The first successful pediatric heart transplant
The first to discover that adult heart diseases begin in childhood

A Medical Mission, Providing Community Care

In countries like the United States where proof of insurance is required before treatment will take place, teaching hospitals also serve as a safety net providing treatment to uninsured and under-insured patients. As a safety net hospital, University Medical Center of El Paso is distinguished by its commitment to provide access to care for people with limited or no access to health care due to their financial circumstances, insurance status, or health condition.