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The University of Southern California veered sharply and intentionally from custom in naming the primary girl — and the primary geriatrician — to guide its 133-year-old medical college.
Dr. Laura Mosqueda, who took over the place on May 1, stated she’ll work exhausting to steer extra younger medical doctors towards aged care to deal with the nation’s growing older inhabitants. At the identical time, she’s going to face a stiff problem making an attempt to assist rehabilitate the picture of USC because it grapples with the rising fallout from latest drug and sexual misconduct scandals.
Mosqueda’s appointment is partly the results of USC’s #MeToo second. It sends an unmistakable message that campus officers need to open a brand new chapter after the sobering revelations that toppled Mosqueda’s two instant predecessors and the university’s president — all males.
“I think it signals a sea of change at USC,” Mosqueda, 58, stated in an interview. “I think as a woman I’m probably more likely to bring a less competitive and more collaborative, more nurturing approach. I think we women are tough in different ways.”
She added that the choice to place her in control of the college’s Keck School of Medicine was “a really odd choice at this university. It’s an obvious action that says we’re doing things differently.”
Mosqueda’s ascent additionally indicators that Keck is able to embrace a brand new perspective reflecting the nation’s altering demographics. It exhibits that the sphere of geriatrics “is coming of age,” stated Dr. Sharon Brangman, chief of geriatrics on the State University of New York’s Upstate Medical University.
Care for the aged is a “crucial” a part of coaching well being care professionals, Brangman stated. “Every doctor-to-be, nurse-, physical therapist- and pharmacist-to-be should have some training in caring for older adults, because that population is growing.”
Close to 50 million people residing within the United States, or about 15 p.c of the inhabitants, are 65 and older, in accordance with the U.S. Census Bureau. That quantity is predicted to rise to about 98 million, or practically 25 p.c, by 2060. Of these, about 20 million will probably be over age 85.
Geriatrics is “not about curing,” Mosqueda stated. “We’re about caring. It’s not a heroic specialty. It takes a bit more of an understanding to appreciate it as a specialty. Yet it’s tremendously rewarding. We need to get it into the curriculum.”
As dean, Mosqueda will oversee greater than four,150 full-time and voluntary college members who educate 800 medical college students and 1,000 others pursuing graduate and postgraduate levels. The college additionally trains greater than 900 resident physicians in additional than 50 specialties or sub-specialties.
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Mosqueda involves the job with Trojan satisfaction deep in her blood. Both her mother and father graduated from the USC medical college when “there was a quota of six women per class,” Mosqueda stated. Mosqueda herself can be a USC medical college graduate, and he or she later returned as a professor and chair of the household medication division earlier than being named interim dean final October.
Mosqueda’s mom, a radiologist specializing in mammography, and her father, a gastroenterologist, had profitable careers at Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles. But they by no means pressured their daughter to develop into a doctor, Mosqueda recalled. (Kaiser Health News shouldn’t be affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)
She took an preliminary curiosity in veterinary medication and marine biology — she’s nonetheless an avid scuba diver — however later discovered her path in main care, household medication and geriatrics, in addition to the detection and treatment of elder abuse.
In a memo saying Mosqueda’s appointment to the USC neighborhood, provost Michael Quick stated assist for her amongst college, workers and college students had been overwhelming.
“It was clear to us, and to the vast majority of the Keck community, that we had identified the right dean,” Quick stated.
The establishment Mosqueda now heads was pressured late final 12 months to acknowledge alleged misconduct by two former deans, Dr. Carmen Puliafito and Dr. Rohit Varma.
Puliafito, a famend eye surgeon, led the medical college from 2007 till March 2016, when he abruptly resigned as dean, saying he needed to pursue different alternatives, although he remained on the college. The Los Angeles Times later reported that three weeks earlier than his resignation he had been in a Pasadena lodge room with a younger girl who overdosed in his presence and was rushed to the hospital.
Puliafito was later fired from the school after the Times reported he had related to criminals and drug abusers. In September, the state suspended his license to apply medication. Varma, who succeeded Puliafito as dean, resigned final fall after stories surfaced he had as soon as sexually harassed and then retaliated in opposition to a feminine fellow.
More just lately, the college has been embroiled in an issue over allegations of sexual abuse spanning many years by USC gynecologist George Tyndall. The allegations have landed the college in a heap of authorized hassle, drawing numerous lawsuits and a federal investigation.
Late final month, USC president Max Nikias agreed to step down below stress from college students and college. And earlier this month, college students marched on campus to protest how the college has dealt with the Tyndall case.
“Students are feeling largely unheard, neglected and misled,” stated Nivedita Kar, a doctoral scholar in biostatistics at Keck. “At places like Keck, where men hold a tremendous amount of privilege and therefore institutional power, the new dean must completely change the medical school culture to hear the voices of the underrepresented, restore trust and actually protect its students.”
Mosqueda is aware of she’s bought her work lower out for her.
“We’ve been through a bad series here and we have to accept responsibility for the part of this that is our own doing,” she stated. “I don’t want to be distracted. I want to own up to what was wrong and make it right.”
Making it proper contains addressing the continued considerations of scholars, she stated, and altering the way in which ladies’s well being is mentioned.
Mosqueda recalled sexist feedback by male physicians when she was a medical scholar at USC within the 1980s. “I would hear things like ‘You’re a good girl,’ in the operating room,” she stated. “In my time, it wasn’t OK to make those comments, but [there was] just acceptance of the fact that it was going to happen.”
Mosqueda is revered by her friends nationwide as a researcher and an skilled in geriatrics and household medication. She directs the National Center on Elder Abuse, a federally funded initiative, and he or she co-founded the nation’s first Elder Abuse Forensic Center.
“Physicians like Dr. Mosqueda, who was one of the first wave of doctors specializing in geriatrics, have had to innovate and revamp programs and teach medical schools about the value of geriatrics,” stated Brangman, the Upstate Medical University geriatrics chief. “All of these things created the leadership skills that have come to fruition.”
One of the challenges in enhancing elder care will probably be to make geriatrics a horny area for brand spanking new medical doctors, Brangman and Mosqueda stated. Older adults have sophisticated well being care points however the specialty doesn’t pay properly.
In addition, the stigma connected to growing older persists even now. “We live in an ageist society,” Mosqueda stated.
Mosqueda stated she is keen to deal with head-on the challenges dealing with USC. Honesty and humility are the 2 components that make a great physician, and that’s what is required to heal the college and transfer past its present troubles, she stated.
“I don’t view myself as a token,” Mosqueda stated of being the medical college’s first feminine dean. “I want to do the right things for the right reasons.”
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This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, which publishes California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation.
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