School of Medicine

Phipps Psychiatric Clinic celebrates 100 years

A century ago, most psychiatric patients were sent to asylums, more for isolation than treatment and often in deplorable conditions.

It was against this backdrop that the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins was completed in 1913, helping usher in a new era of psychiatric care in a setting of teaching and scientific research. It was a prestigious institution from the outset, and its reputation endures a century later.

Adolf Meyer, the first director of the Phipps Clinic, is credited by his successors for elevating psychiatry to a standing alongside general medicine.

“He produced a new, optimistic view about what the future held for psychiatry,” says University Distinguished Service Professor Paul McHugh, who served as director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Medicine from 1975 to 2001. Meyer understood that the discipline needed to move to the university setting to create a more rigorous and scientific environment.

Meyer, a neuropathologist, pioneered the term psychobiology, which puts emphasis on studying patients and their lives, not just their symptoms. Just as life is studied at the molecular level, the study of life at the psychobiological level is a useful and necessary part of psychiatry.

Today, clinicians in the department divide their time between research and patient care, both in a teaching setting. “It all comes together in one place, and that is on the ward where we are seeing the patients, we are doing research, and we are teaching medical students, residents and fellows. There's a commitment as much to students as to patients, to guide the next generation," says Raymond DePaulo Jr., Med '72, the Henry Phipps Professor of Psychiatry and current director of the department.

To read more about the Phipps Clinic, click here.

In celebration of a century of psychiatry, the Phipps Clinic is having a special lecture series that will highlight people, ideas, and work that distinguish and define the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. The next scheduled lecture is March 27. Click here for more information on the lecture series.

Alumni Update

Maura McGuire, Med '83, helps to reinvigorate primary care

If William Osler could return to Johns Hopkins today, he’d likely be astonished to find so many specialists. Indeed, Johns Hopkins Hospital’s revered first physician-in-chief preached a “generalist” approach that combined empathy for patients with the best that medical science had to offer.

Osler’s insights laid the groundwork for the field of medicine that would become known as primary care. But as specialties have come into their own, primary care across the nation has grappled with challenges.

So a series of meetings was launched with several clinical leaders throughout Johns Hopkins Medicine. All agreed that a more concerted effort was needed to bring people together to bolster the role of primary care both at Johns Hopkins and on the national stage.

The result of their conversations is the newly formed Johns Hopkins Consortium for the Advancement of Primary Care, with one of the leaders being the School of Medicine's own alumna, Maura McGuire. This consortium aims to nurture the development, value and growth of primary care research, education, national policy and clinical medicine for pediatric and adult patients within all entities of Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Addressing this challenge must begin with exposing students early on to primary care. One example is the Longitudinal Ambulatory Clerkship, directed by McGuire as part of the Genes to Society curriculum. The clerkship gives medical students firsthand experience in community doctors’ offices. “You can talk about patients’ struggles with insurance, landing an appointment, transportation and family dynamics, but you won’t get it till you go out in the world,” says McGuire, who is also director of education for JHCP and assistant dean for part-time faculty. 

In that spirit, says McGuire, the new consortium will continue to collect “wonderful ideas to expand the visibility of primary care across the institution.” That includes enhancing research in the field and inspiring more students to join its ranks. 

To read the full Dome article, click here.

Student News

Match Day 2013

A turning point in the lives of medical students

On March 15, 113 graduating Johns Hopkins medical students gathered in the Armstrong Medical Education Building to celebrate Match Day.

“Some of the most popular specialty areas among this year’s graduates are general internal medicine, pediatrics, emergency medicine, ophthalmology and general surgery,” says Thomas Koenig, Med '89 and associate dean for student affairs at Hopkins. “After training in those and other disciplines, many go on to fellowships in specialized areas of medicine, such as cardiology and pulmonology - or they may pursue training in surgical subspecialties, such as vascular or thoracic surgery,” Koenig says.

This is the first graduating class at Johns Hopkins in which all the medical students have completed four years of a new curriculum, called Genes to Society. The curriculum includes courses that traditionally have not been taught in medical school, including health care disparities, patient safety and quality and palliative care. And there is more focus on teaching about substance abuse and pain.

To see more press coverage and video about Match Day, click here.

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