A medical school needs to be accredited to offer educational activities. The UNLV School of Medicine requires accreditations from three separate national agencies including:
- The Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME), which accredits medical education programs leading to a Medical Doctor, M.D. degree in the United States and Canada. We submitted our accrediting documents to the LCME in December.
- The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) that oversees residency and fellowship programs. Students graduating with a M.D. degree in the United States are then eligible for residency training.
- The Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) that allows medical schools to provide continuing medical education.
Medical school is a four-year program. When a student graduates they receive a Medical Doctor, M.D., degree but cannot practice medicine without supervision. They first must take a residency program in a particular specialty - such as family medicine, orthopedics, surgery, etc. Each residency varies in length depending on the specialty but the minimum is three years; many of the surgical specialties require five years to complete.
After residency a new physician can go directly into private practice or they may choose to complete additional specialized training in a fellowship program.
Dr. Miriam Bar-on will be responsible for managing our residency and fellowship programs. Currently, she is the Designated Institutional Official for the University of Nevada-Reno School of Medicine (UNSOM) where she supervises more than 290 residents, who are participating in 11 different residency programs and six fellowship programs. She will become full-time faculty at UNLV School of Medicine when UNSOM's residency and fellowship programs transfer to our medical school in July 2017, and has already completed our ACGME application documents due in April 2016. The application focuses on how an institution assures the educational environment for the resident/fellow is excellent, how physicians participate in quality care, how they are appropriately supervised, and how professional development of the faculty and learners will be accomplished.
Here is the list of residency and fellowship programs in Las Vegas and the number of physicians participating in each one: Emergency medicine (30); family medicine (15); family medicine rural tract (4); internal medicine (76) obstetrics/gynecology (12); orthopedics (20 starting July 2016); otolaryngology (5); pediatrics (39); plastic surgery (6); psychiatry (24); and surgery (29). Fellowships include cardiology (9); child and adolescent psychiatry (4); gastroenterology (6); pulmonary critical care (9); sports medicine (1) and surgical critical care (3). We look forward to transferring these programs to UNLV School of Medicine and to creating even more needed residency and fellowships programs.
Strong residency and fellowships programs are the key to building our physician workforce in Nevada. Studies indicate physicians are much more likely to practice in the state they complete their residency training.
