LMU-DCOM E-Newsletter
Fall 2011 Issue
Fall 2011 Issue
www.LMUnet.edu/dcom/
Fall Greetings from LMU-DCOM!
As the vibrant
fall leaves are
slowly succumbing to the winds
and falling one
after another, it is
hard to believe
that the fall semester is already
winding down
and that the holiday season is right around the corner! I hope that your
fall has been wonderful for all of you. In an effort to
keep you up to date with LMU-DCOM, you will find
in this newsletter all the important news and events
that have occurred this fall. If you have any questions
regarding any of the content, please do not hesitate to
contact me. Also, please feel free to share the information with any of your students who might be interested, or forward the newsletter to them.
On behalf of the entire LMU-DCOM family, I wish
you a happy Thanksgiving, a wonderful Christmas and
all the best for the new year!
Sincerely,
Juliette Egnatz
Admissions Recruiter
(423) 869-6478
juliette.egnatz@lmunet.edu
Class of 2015 White Coat
Ceremony
LMU-DCOM Receives
Full Accreditation
Following a February visit from the
American Osteopathic Association—
Commission on Osteopathic College
Accreditation, LMU-DCOM is proud
to announce that it was granted its full
accreditation by AOA—COCA on
May 1, 2011. Additional information
on accreditation can be found at
www.aoacoca.org/ .
2011 Annual AOA
Conference & Expo
Each year, the AOA Annual Osteopathic Medical Conference and Exposition, held in conjunction with the
Annual AOA Research Conference,
offers DOs, faculty members and osteopathic medical students, the opportunity to present their research findings and network within the osteopathic community. The combined
event, which this year took place in
Orlando, Fla, from Sunday, October
30 through Tuesday, November 1,
includes several didactic sessions, a
poster exhibition and a student poster
competition, among other social activities.
LMU-DCOM was well represented at
the conference, with a total of 100
attendees, including faculty, staff,
students and alumni.
Notable Recognition For
LMU-DCOM At AOA
Conference:
A month after their arrival on campus for their orientation, the DO Class of 2015 finally walked across the
stage to receive their symbolic white coats during their
White Coat Ceremony, held on Saturday, September
24, in LMU’s Tex Turner Arena. Dr. Maurice Nida, an
osteopathic family physician and director of medical
education at Wellmont Health System in Big Stone
Gap, VA, was the keynote speaker at the event.
The White Coat Ceremony is a standard ritual in medical schools across the nation, designed to mark a student’s entrance into medical school. The tradition originated at Columbia University’s College of Physicians
and Surgeons, where they held the first-ever White
Coat Ceremony in 1993.
During the three-day conference, the
announcement of LMU-DCOM’s
Dean, Ray E. Stowers, DO, as president-elect of the AOA, was officially
made to all those in attendance. Members of the osteopathic medical community were able to meet and greet in
person the newly appointed AOA
president.
Dr. Ray E. Stowers, an AOA boardcertified family physician, has been
instrumental in the development of
future osteopathic physicians for many
years and has been a big advocate of
rural medicine particularly. Dr. Stowers will undoubtedly continue to have
a big impact on the growth of osteopathic medicine around the nation.
For more information about Dr. Ray
E. Stowers, click here.
The White Coat Ceremony is always a highlyanticipated event and over a thousand people were present to witness this happy occurrence, including students’ family members and friends, and LMU-DCOM
faculty, staff and board members.
What Have Our D.O. Students
Been Up To This Semester?
Below are brief updates of what each of our current DO
classes have been working on this semester:
Class of 2012:
Students from this class have been out conducting their
second year of the rotations cycle, in hospitals and clinics across the nation. During this time, they have also
been interviewing for the residency placements for
which they applied to in the summer. Residency programs usually conduct candidate interviews throughout
the fall and pick their matches in January and February.
DO students are able to apply to both MD or DO residencies, whereas MD students are only able to apply to
MD residencies.
To view information about the residency placements for
our recently-graduated Class of 2011, click here.
Class of 2013:
These students have been out since August completing
their first semester of the two-year rotations cycle. Our
class of 2013 is also spread out across the country in
many different locations from local Appalachia to places as far as Chicago, Maine, Key West, California and
anywhere in between.
For a detailed schedule of LMU-DCOM’s rotations cycle, click here.
For a list of our clinical rotation sites, click here.
Class of 2014:
Aside from following LMU-DCOM’s tradition of welcoming and helping the new first-year students feel at
home, our second
-year students
have been
successfully
progressing
through their
tough 4thsemester
curriculum,
which includes
the following:
7 weeks studying the Cardiovascular System;
 4 weeks studying the Respiratory System;
 4 weeks studying the Renal System;
 4 weeks studying Hematology & the Lymph System;
The above are done in combination with:
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Ray E. Stowers, DO, FACOFP
LMU Health Sciences Vice President,
LMU-DCOM Dean; AOA President-Elect
In addition to Dr. Stowers’ prestigious
appointment, another member of the
LMU-DCOM family was also recognized during the AOA conference. Dr.
Teitelbaum, DO, PhD, MPH, professor of Preventive Medicine at LMUDCOM, was awarded the George W.
Northrup Educator of the Year Award
from SOMA (Student Osteopathic
Medical Association).
“This was a great honor,” said Dr.
Teitelbaum.
Dr. Teitelbaum has had a longstanding and prestigious career in osteopathic medicine. After earning a
BS in Mathematics from California
State Polytechnic College, he then
earned an MA in Curriculum Development and a PhD in Philosophy and
Statistics from Michigan State University. He then earned an MPH from
Harvard School of Public Health before finally earning his DO degree
from Michigan State University. He
holds four different state licensures in
Tennessee, Michigan, New York and
Iowa and has received throughout his
career numerous honors and awards
including five previous “Professor of
the Year” awards.
For more information about Dr. Howard S. Teitelbaum, click here.
15 weeks of the third section of the Osteopathic Principles and Practice series (Osteopathic musculoskeletal study); and
15 weeks of clinical-setting practice with our standardized patients at our on-site standardized clinic.
At the end of this semester, the Class of 2014 students
will complete a Clinical Exam before going on their
two-week Christmas break.
For a detailed view of our DO curriculum, click here.
LMU-DCOM Dean Ray E. Stowers
(left) posing with Dr. Howard S.
Teitelbaum (right) after receiving the
George W. Northrup Educator of the
Year Award from SOMA.
Class of 2015:
As their first semester in
medical school slowly winds
down, below is the curriculum these first-year students
have been following this fall:
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About LMU-DCOM
19 weeks of Medical
Gross Anatomy;
19 weeks of Molecular
Fundamentals of Medicine I;
15 weeks of Foundations
of Modern Healthcare I;
15 weeks of the first section
of the Osteopathic Principles and Practice series
(Osteopathic musculoskeletal study); and
14 weeks of clinical-setting practice with our standardized patients at our on-site standardized clinic.
The Class of 2015 will also conclude their semester with
a Clinical Exam before their Christmas break.
For a detailed view of our DO curriculum, click here.
Osteoblast 2011
On the beautiful late summer day of August 24, the
Class of 2014 hosted Osteoblast. This is an annual
event organized by our second-year students, aimed at
showcasing to our first-year students all the clubs and
organizations available to join at LMU-DCOM. The
event always takes place after the first big exam and is
a great way for students to wind down and enjoy themselves following long and stressful hours of studying.
Tables were setup outside the building for each of the
22 clubs and a catered dinner was provided.
LMU-DCOM’s list of clubs and organizations includes
groups for specific medical fields— orthopedics, pediatrics, etc— for military members, for minority members, for women and even a wilderness medical group.
For a complete list of LMU-DCOM’s clubs and organizations, click here.
Osteoblast
2011
The DeBusk College of Osteopathic
Medicine is located on the campus of
Lincoln Memorial University, in Harrogate, Tenn., a small town nestled in
the beautiful mountains of the Appalachian region, only a few miles from
the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. The state-of-the-art college
was founded on August 1, 2007, and
opened its doors to its inaugural class
on August 3, 2007.
The region’s rural setting is key to
upholding LMU-DCOM’s mission of
producing outstanding and caring osteopathic physicians who will focus
on providing health care in underserved communities in Appalachia and
across the nation.
In addition to offering the Doctor of
Osteopathic Medicine (DO) program,
LMU-DCOM also offers a Physician
Assistant (PA) program, as well as a
DO-MBA program for students wishing to complement their education
with a business degree.
A Post-baccalaureate Medical Sciences program is also offered for students
who need to strengthen their science
knowledge and grade point average
before applying to the DO program.
More information about LMU-DCOM
can be found at www.LMUnet.edu/
dcom/ .
Mark Your Calendars!!
If you have been
thinking about
taking a trip
over to Harrogate, TN, to visit
our state-of-theart facility, then keep the following in
mind:
Hospital Day 2011
On Wednesday, November 9, LMU-DCOM hosted its
annual Hospital Day.
This event welcomes representatives from hospitals,
clinics and health systems from across the nation to
present employment, internship, sponsorship and residency opportunities to our current students upon their
graduation from our program. The event is a great networking opportunity for our current students.
This fall, a total of 50 hospitals, clinics and health systems attended our event, coming from as far as Kingman, AZ.
Hospital
Day
2011
Although this is still a tentative date at
this point in time, LMU-DCOM’s
admissions office is planning an Osteopathic Medicine Awareness Conference for Saturday, April 14, 2012. The
event will feature all the following:

Osteopathic Medicine Overview;
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Curriculum Overview (PreClinical and Clinical);

Application Process Overview;

Financial Aid Overview;

Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine Demonstration;

Student Q&A Panel;

Tour of the facilities.
An invitation will be mailed to you
once planning is finalized. We ask all
faculty advisors to please share this
information with your students and we
hope to see as many of you and your
students as possible at this event!
MedWar Tennessee 2011
For the third year in a row, LMU-DCOM is proud to have hosted once
again, the Tennessee Medical Wilderness Adventure Race (MedWar
Tennessee), on Saturday, November 19.
MedWar is a nationwide program that features a series of triathlon-like
races in locations across the nation, where adventure racing is combined with wilderness medicine. The purpose of these races is to teach
and test wilderness survival and medical skills through a fun teambased competition.
This year’s MedWar Tennessee was sponsored and organized by LMU-DCOM’s Wilderness Medicine club. A total of 17 teams from all over the United States, including two LMU-DCOM teams,
attended the event. The race course was 13 miles long and included biking, hiking and running. It
began on the LMU campus, took racers into the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park and
ended back on the LMU campus, at the Tex Turner Arena. Throughout the course, participant
teams were faced with 4 different staged medical scenarios: a wild animal attack, an emergency
airway procedure, a gun-shot wound and a hypothermia case. In total, ten different medical skills
were tested through the race. The gun-shot wound scenario was carried out by LMU-DCOM’s
STORM club.
Start time for the race was 10am and teams had until 6pm to complete it. The winning team was
one of the two LMU-DCOM teams and they crossed the finish line at 2:47pm. In addition to the
participating teams, the event also required the services of numerous flight and paramedic crews
who joined us from several different states, as well as the participation of over 50 volunteers from
the LMU and the local community. At the conclusion of the race, LMU-DCOM’s SAAO club offered Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine sessions on anyone interested. A barbeque was provided
for all participants, hosted by LMU-DCOM’s Dean, Dr. Stowers, and one of LMU-DCOM’s faculty members, Dr. Weiting.
With even the weather’s cooperation, this year’s MedWar Tennessee turned out very successfully
and we are already looking forward to next year’s event!
For more information about MedWar, visit their website at www.medwar.org .
PA Program News
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Final Accreditation Visit:
Following the DO program’s full accreditation in May 2011,
LMU-DCOM’s PA program just underwent their final accreditation visit on September 15 and 16 by the Accreditation Review
Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant, Inc.
(ARC—PA). Everyone is very optimistic and eagerly awaiting the
results, which will be announced at the next board meeting in
March, 2012.
For more information on the LMU-DCOM PA program accreditation, please visit
www.arc-pa.org .
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Interviews For Class of 2014:
Since mid-September, the PA program’s faculty and staff have also been busy conducting
applicants’ interviews to fill the 80 slots for the future Class of 2014. The applicant pool for
the PA program continues to grow and this year, the admissions office is expecting to interview approximately 200 applicants to fill the upcoming class. This interview cycle is expected
to conclude on Friday, February 10, 2012.
For more information about admissions into the PA program, click here.
The Post-Baccalaureate Medical Sciences Program

What Is the PMSP?
The Post-Baccalaureate Medical Science Program is a 12-month certificate program of study
designed for college graduates who want to pursue a career in medicine and who need to receive additional academic training or wish to improve their academic credentials in order to
develop a successful application portfolio for admission into medical school.
The PMSP follows a rigorous curriculum of upper-level biology courses and medical gross
anatomy, which they take at LMU-DCOM with LMU-DCOM faculty and alongside LMUDCOM students.
One of the biggest advantages for students in the PMSP is that they will be guaranteed an interview at LMU-DCOM for admission into the DO program. In fact, 80% of this past year’s
PMSP students were accepted into the DO class of 2015, adding cultural diversity to the LMU
-DCOM student population. LMU’s PMSP faculty is dedicated to continue to produce successful medical school applicants.
For more information on the PSMP’s curriculum, overview, admissions and more, please visit
www.lmunet.edu/academics/pmsp/index.shtml or contact Dr. Amiel Jarstfer at
amiel.jarstfer@lmunet.edu or at 423-869-6364.
LMU Future Math & Sciences Building To Open This Summer
The construction of LMU’s up-coming Math &
Sciences building is fast progressing and is on
schedule for its expected summer opening. This
massive four-story building will be 140,000 square
-feet and will house numerous state-of-the-art lecture halls, classrooms, laboratories and study halls,
and will feature some of the best and latest technology available.
In addition to housing all the under-graduate and
pre-professional math and science academic programs, this building will also serve as an expansion to the LMU-DCOM facilities, with certain labs
reserved for use by the DO students. The building will also be home to the PMSP program and to
the future proposed LMU College of Veterinary and Comparative Medicine.