The Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University has signed a five-year clinical affiliation with Waterbury Hospital. The state’s new $100 million medical school’s inaugural class of 60 students started classes Aug. 19.
“Waterbury Hospital has a long tradition of training residents and medical students,” said Dr. Bruce Koeppen, founding dean of the medical school and vice president for health affairs at Quinnipiac. “We are pleased that they will now be teaching our students.”
Medical school students at Quinnipiac will have the opportunity to complete clinical rotations with required supervision at Waterbury Hospital beginning in the summer of 2015, and physicians working with the students will be appointed clinical professors at the School of Medicine.
“We are pleased to be part of this new educational affiliation agreement between Quinnipiac University and Waterbury Hospital,” said Dr. David J. Pizzuto, vice president of medical affairs and chief medical officer at Waterbury Hospital. “This agreement will continue Waterbury Hospital’s longstanding relationship with the Quinnipiac UniversitySchool of Health Sciences and the Quinnipiac University School of Nursing as well as begin a new relationship with Quinnipiac University’s Frank H. Netter M.D. School of Medicine.”
Pizzuto said the agreement will benefit both institutions.
“It will make available the vast educational resources of the medical school to Waterbury Hospital’s medical residents, surgical residents and members of its medical staff as well as giving the medical school the ability to have its students do clinical rotations in a community hospital which has a longstanding history of providing excellence in graduate medical education,” Pizzuto said.
Waterbury Hospital joins St. Vincent’s Medical Center of Bridgeport, the medical school’s primary clinical partner, Middlesex Hospital of Middletown, MidState Medical Center of Meriden, and Jewish Senior Services, The Jewish Home of Fairfield, as institutions with clinical affiliations with the medical school. Hartford Hospital is a research partner of the medical school.
“Having multiple clinical affiliates benefits students in two important ways,” Koeppen said. “First, it reduces the number of students at any given site, thus providing students with more patient contact and experiences. Second, it provides students with a perspective of how high quality patient care can be provided in different settings.”
The Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine is located in the Center for Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences on Quinnipiac’s North Haven Campus with the School of Nursing and School of Health Sciences. The three schools will be united not only in the same state-of-the-art complex but by the same mission: to graduate medical and health care practitioners who will be the driving force for a more collaborative, economical and efficient health care system. With the addition of a medical school, Quinnipiac will be educating the triad responsible for primary care—the physician assistant, nurse practitioner and physician.
The students will attend medical school in a state-of-the-art facility with simulation laboratories, examination and patient assessment rooms, high-tech classrooms, operating rooms and electronic resources that enable them to access the information they’ll need around the clock.
Students in the first class come from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas. The list of schools where they received their undergraduate educations includes: Yale University, Stanford University, University of California, Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, New York University and Providence College.
The full-time faculty is made up of 22 professors. Many of them left positions at other institutions, including Yale University, Harvard University, University of Connecticut, University of Florida, University of Texas, University of California-San Diego and University of Indiana, to teach at Quinnipiac.
In the Fall of 2012, the medical school received preliminary accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education and approval from the state Board of Education.
The school is named for Dr. Frank H. Netter, a world-renowned medical illustrator whose drawings and atlases have educated medical students for decades.