The Class of 1978’s Tom Scalea spoke at the VCU Pre-Medical Society’s annual banquet that recognizes graduating students who have been accepted into medical school.

As students look toward a career in medicine, they must choose to practice in a specialty they love, said Thomas Scalea, M.D.

The Class of 1978’s Scalea, now the physician-in-chief of the University of Maryland’s R Adams Crowley Shock Trauma Center, returned to Richmond to share experiences from his career. He told pre-med students that a career in medicine is rewarding and encouraged them to look for mentors who will inspire them.

“Medical school was the best thing I ever did,” Scalea told the VCU Pre-Medical Society. “Every day, but four, I have loved what I do.” On those four days, he had to confront the deaths of patients and the question of whether he had made the right call in their treatment.

The pre-medical society hosts an annual banquet that recognizes graduating students who have been accepted into medical school. In his wide-ranging discussion, Scalea urged them to focus on “the humanity of doctoring,” as they embark on careers in medicine.

The Class of 1978’s Tom Scalea spoke at the VCU Pre-Medical Society’s annual banquet that recognizes graduating students who have been accepted into medical school.

“Sit on the bed, take their hand in yours and talk to them,” he said. “And the world becomes a better place for them than before.”

Scalea discussed the steps physicians can take to provide more humane care for patients and their families. At the Crowley Shock Trauma Center, Scalea and his team do a second set of rounds at 6 p.m. each evening to meet with his patients’ families and answer their questions.

As the graduating students look toward medical school and futures as physicians, Scalea encouraged them to discover what they are passionate about and work tirelessly to pursue it.

Tom Scalea and Jerry Strauss

Every year, the medical school honors two alumni for their outstanding achievements during Reunion Weekend. This year, Dean of Medicine Jerry Strauss, M.D., Ph.D., bestowed the awards at the Grand Opening Gala of the McGlothlin Medical Education Center.

“As we mark the 175th anniversary of the founding of our medical school, the support of our alumni has never been more important,” Strauss said, noting how fitting it was to celebrate the school’s alumni in this milestone year. “ It is our alumni and their accomplishments, after all, that have advanced the School of Medicine’s reputation.”

David Whitehead and Jerry Strauss

This year, the Class of 1978′s Tom Scalea was named Outstanding Medical Alumnus. For more than 15 years, he has served as physician-in-chief of the University of Maryland’s R Adams Crowley Shock Trauma Center. In this role, he oversees the nation’s first and only integrated trauma hospital. In addition to working with the Air Force to provide essential care to wounded troops, Dr. Scalea has also traveled internationally with his team to Haiti and China to offer help in the aftermath of devastating earthquakes.

The Caravati Service Award went to the Class of 1973′s David Whitehead who also completed his family medicine training on the MCV Campus. He went on to establish his own family practice office with a fellow 1973 classmate and served the community of Harrisonburg for 30 years. After retirement, Dr. Whitehead returned to Richmond and has contributed to the success of the medical school through his work on the Admissions Committee, as an assistant clinical professor of family medicine and as a member of the Continuing Medical Education Committee.

Robert J. Feezor, M.D.

Located near Kaiserslautern, Germany the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center is an American College of Surgeons Level 1 Trauma Center and the largest American hospital outside the United States. It serves as a stopping point for soldiers who need urgent care after being critically injured in Afghanistan’s Operation Enduring Freedom.

Earlier this year Robert J. Feezor, M’99, returned from a two-week rotation at LRMC where he volunteered his services in helping to care for U.S. military members.

“This was my first experience volunteering at LRMC,” said Feezor, who is usually found at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine where he is an associate professor of surgery and program director of the vascular surgery fellowship.

“I have no military background, but I was drawn to this opportunity by the desire to say ‘thank you’ in some way to the women and men who give me the right to exercise all the liberties I have at home.”

Read more about Feezor’s experience at LRMC on the Society for Vascular Surgery’s website.

John E. Nestler, M.D.

The Virginia Chapter of the American College of Physicians honored John E. Nestler, M.D., with the 2013 Laureate Award at its Annual Meeting and Clinical Update held March 1-2 in Richmond. Nestler, who is the William Branch Porter Professor of Medicine and chair of Department of Internal Medicine, was honored for his distinguished service to the community and chapter.

He is a distinguished scholar and internationally recognized expert on the effects of insulin on polycystic ovary syndrome, a common condition related to diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease. In the 1980s, Nestler was among the first scientists in the world to suggest that insulin was an important reproductive hormone.

His pioneering work to induce ovulation through the use of such insulin-sensitizing drugs as metformin has led to the common use of metformin to treat infertility in women with PCOS, as well as to address their high risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In a 1998 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Nestler’s research team was the first to publish findings of the combination therapy of metformin and clomiphene to promote ovulation.

He is the principal investigator on two National Institutes of Health grants, and his honors include the school of medicine’s Outstanding Research Achievement Award and Distinguished Mentor in Clinical Sciences Award. He has authored more than 100 original publications and edited three books.

Nestler, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine, is a former chief medical resident at MCV Hospitals. He has served as chair of the department since 2009. He was vice chair from 2003 to 2009 and was chair of the Division of Endocrinology & Metabolism from 1997 to 2009.

Christopher Woleben, M.D.

Christopher Woleben, M.D., is accustomed to fourth-year students knocking on his door with questions about how to spend the first few months of the fourth-year. Should they take off time to study for the national boards? Or perhaps devote the time to an away elective at the medical center where they’d like to train in their favorite specialty?

In a departure from the normal one-on-one conversations, he recently answered those questions for the benefit of the more than 80,000 medical students across the United States.

The AAMC called on his expertise for the winter 2013 edition of its Choices newsletter. The newsletter is distributed electronically to students nationwide as part of the AAMC’s Careers in Medicine program. His answers appear in an Ask the Advisor column, Planning Your Fourth Year.

A graduate of the medical school’s Class of 1997, Woleben is now associate dean for student affairs at his alma mater. He explains that students need to plan wisely to maximize their chances of successfully matching to the training program of their choice. One part of that is “prioritizing the limited time available at the beginning of the fourth year,” he says.

Woleben has created the medical school’s own four-year advising program, called Careers in Medicine at VCU, which helps medical students select their paths in medicine and develop career planning skills that will assist in them in residency and beyond.

“According to surveys of our students, approximately 65 percent change their minds during medical school about the medical specialty they want to pursue,” Woleben says. “The goal of Careers in Medicine is to help students find their fit with the specialty that best suits them. We have done very well with our residency match statistics over the years, and I would like to think the program has made some impact on the success of our students.”

This is the fifth year the program has been in place. Over that time, Woleben has collaborated with the AAMC’s Jeanette Calli, who directs the AAMC’s national Careers in Medicine program, as well as Anita Navarro, a research analyst with the AAMC program. As a result of their past work, they asked Woleben if he would be interested in writing the column for the winter edition.

Ed Ray, M.D., founding chair of the Division of Pulmonary Disease

When Alpha A. “Berry” Fowler, M.D., arrived on the MCV Campus in the mid-70s, Ed Ray, M.D., was just stepping down from his more than 20-year tenure as the founding chair of the Division of Pulmonary Disease. Ray, a specialist in tuberculosis, stayed on faculty and became a mentor to the younger Fowler, who had just earned his medical degree from the Medical College of Georgia and had come up to Richmond for internal medicine residency training.

Today, Fowler sits in the Pulmonary Disease Division’s chairman seat that Ray once held. “He was the first pulmonologist here and was a legend,” says Fowler. “He was an inspiration and one of the reasons I chose pulmonary medicine as a specialty.”

Ray was one of MCV’s first bronchoscopists. He was known across Virginia for his use of the Jackson rigid bronchoscope to examine patients’ airways for foreign objects, bleeding or inflammation. Over the years, Ray assembled an unusual collection of objects retrieved from patients’ airways, including a peach pit and a compass, coins from the late 1940s, buttons and even a belt buckle.

The use of the rigid bronchoscope which Ray pioneered at MCV fell out of favor for the most part in the 1960s when the flexible fiberoptic bronchoscope was introduced into clinical medicine.

“What is old is new again,” says Fowler. “Dr. Ed Ray was one of the first physicians in Virginia to use the rigid endoscope. However, today, decades later, the rigid bronchoscope is being used once again. Pulmonologists at MCV employ rigid bronchoscopy, performing at least two or three procedures each week.” Importantly, if Ray were practicing today, he’d be referred to as an interventional pulmonologist, based upon the tools he used and the techniques he pioneered at MCV.

During a tour of the MCV Campus, the Class of 1976′s Gaylord Ray and Wes Shepherd, M.D., H’03, director of interventional pulmonology, look through the collection of objects Ray’s father had retrieved from patients’ airways during his tenure as the founding chair of the Division of Pulmonary Disease.

Ray’s contributions were recently remembered when his son, Gaylord Ray, of the School of Medicine’s Class of 1976, returned to the MCV Campus. He met with Fowler and other Pulmonary Division faculty when he toured the division facilities, the operating room, the Medical Respiratory Intensive Care Unit and the simulation center where medical students and pulmonary trainees gain procedural experience. He says he was impressed with what he saw of the strides the division has made under Fowler’s direction. “The department is in good hands, and my father would be quite proud to see the training, but, in particular, the quality of the division.”

He learned from the director of interventional pulmonology, Ray “Wes” Shepherd, M.D., H’03, that the division’s interventional pulmonology program marked a milestone when it accepted its first fellow in July 2011. There are only 12 interventional pulmonology fellowship programs in the United States, each taking just one fellow per year. And, just this past year, the Interventional Pulmonology Service reached another milestone, performing over 1,000 interventional procedures.

Over lunch, Gaylord Ray shared stories about his father with division faculty members and with his son Chris, who was also on hand. Chris followed in his family’s footsteps onto the MCV Campus and is now president of the medical school’s Class of 2015. “It was important to me to have my son Chris attend the lunch. I see many of my father’s qualities coming out in him, particularly the compassion and thoughtfulness.”

Gaylord W. Ray, M’76, H’79, with his son Christopher C. Ray, president of the medical school’s Class of 2015. They are holding the 1897 diploma awarded to Gaylord’s grandfather, A. Chambers Ray, by the University College of Medicine, a predecessor to MCV. Gaylord Ray’s late father, Ed Ray, is also connected to the medical school: he completed his housestaff training in 1944 and went on to be named the founding chair of the Division of Pulmonary Disease.

Now retired from his practice as an emergency medicine physician, Gaylord Ray has chosen to honor his father’s contributions by establishing an endowed fund that will benefit the Interventional Pulmonology Service. Fowler hopes former trainees of Ed Ray may increase the fund through their own gifts honoring the influence he had on their careers.

“The Interventional Pulmonology Service greatly appreciates Dr. Ray’s desire to honor the legacy of his father,” said Shepherd. “I hope that the attributes that Dr. Ray admired in his father live on today in our interventional pulmonology program.”

Shepherd also appreciated hearing Ray’s stories from the 1950s and 60s. “I have already told several of my rigid bronchoscopy partners about Dr. Gaylord Ray’s childhood experience assisting our first pulmonary chair!”