From Our Chairman

drrice

It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Brown Internal Medicine website.  I hope that you will find it to be user-friendly and that you can get many of your questions answered while visiting.  We are very proud of our Internal medicine training program here at Brown/Lifespan and are eager to engage those of you who are interested in applying.  It is a time of great change in Internal Medicine as programs throughout the country are accommodating to the many changes in our practices both in the hospital and in the ambulatory setting.  We are proud of how we have adjusted and are eager to be at the forefront of establishing new ways of caring for patients into the future.

It is an exciting time here at Brown Lifespan due to a number of important leadership changes that have occurred over the past year.  Jack Elias, our transformational Dean of Medicine and Biological Sciences, stepped down from his position in February 2022. Jack had a remarkable tenure as Dean that saw major advances in our research funding along with important movement in bringing our academic practices together.  We are extraordinarily fortunate to have recruited Mukesh Jain, M.D. from Case Western Reserve School of Medicine to be our new Dean.  Mukesh is a brilliant researcher and has impressive plans to build further on Jack Elias’ impressive record.  The Lifespan Health system also has a new interim CEO, Arthur Sampson, a brilliant and extraordinarily qualified individual who not only has a keen business sense but also believes fundamentally in the engagement of our hospitals with the surrounding community.

Perhaps more directly relevant to those of you interested in training here, the reins of the training program have recently been passed from Dom Tammaro, who held that position for more than three decades, to Rachel Simmons, who for the past 9 years has been an Associate Program Director at the Boston University Internal Medicine training program.  We look forward to Rachel settling in and making her own assessment of our program and are eager to learn from her ways in which we can improve upon what we do.  Fortunately, Dom Tammaro will be continuing in his role of Vice Chair for Education in the Department, ensuring important continuity and a continuation of the culture that we all value so much.

I hope from looking at our website that you get a sense for the culture of our program, which in my estimation is its greatest strength.  From my observations in morning report, Rice rounds, and as an attending on the wards, I am continually impressed by the sense of community demonstrated by our residents, community with each other, with the faculty and staff, with our patients and with the broader community at large.  It is this sense of community and mutual support that is the hallmark of our program and, in my opinion, the component that is most critical to retain.

So take a look around and please feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.

Louis B. Rice, MD
Chairman, Department of Medicine