Duke University School of Medicine


The Duke University School of Medicine along with the Duke University School of Nursing and Duke University Health System create Duke Health. Established in 1925 by James B. Duke, the School of Medicine has earned its reputation as an integral part of one of the world's foremost patient care and biomedical research institutions.
Clinical rotations by medical students and residents occur within the Duke University Health System, a fully integrated academic health care system encompassing a tertiary-care hospital and specialty clinics on the Medical Center campus, two community hospitals, a VA hospital, home health and hospice services, a network of primary care physicians, and other affiliated partners across the SE United States. Duke University Hospital is consistently ranked among the top 20 of some 5,700 American hospitals by US News and World Report. Furthermore, the School of Medicine is especially noted for its groundbreaking biomedical research, bringing in nearly $700 million in NIH-sponsored projects in 2016.

History

In 1925, James B. Duke made a bequest to establish the Duke School of Medicine, Duke School of Nursing, and Duke Hospital, with the goal of improving health care in the Carolinas and nationwide. Three thousand applicants applied to the new medical school in 1929 and 70 first- and third-year students were selected, including four women, for the School's inaugural class. In 1935, just five years after it opened, Duke was ranked among the top 25 percent of medical schools in the country by the AAMC.
Timeline of select research and patient care milestones
1937 Barnes Woodall establishes the nation's first brain tumor program.
1968 Robert Lefkowitz describes the adrenaline receptor.
1972 Child safety cap requirements championed by Jay Arena enacted as federal law.
1982 Pediatric immunologist Rebecca Buckley uses bone marrow transplantation to restore the immune systems of children born with severe combined immunodeficiency, also known as bubble boy disease.
1984 Bart Haynes contributes to the identification of HTLV-III, now known as HIV.
1990 Joanne Kurtzberg establishes the Duke Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Program.
1994 Louise Markert demonstrates that babies born with no immune system, a fatal condition known as complete DiGeorge syndrome, can be cured with thymus transplantation.
1995 Duke scientists link the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes to breast and ovarian cancers.
2001 Miguel Nicolelis develops a system that allows monkeys to control robot arms via brain signals, an important step to enable paralyzed people to control neuroprosthetic limbs.
2006 YT Chen and Priya Kishnani develop Myozyme as the first treatment for Pompe’s disease.
2011 Hai Yan leads a team of scientists from Duke and Johns Hopkins universities to identify mutations in a gene that makes cells immortal and appear to play a pivotal role in three of the most common types of brain tumors, as well as cancers of the liver, tongue and urinary tract.
2013 Duke researcher Jeffery Lawson and Laura Niklason of Yale School of Medicine, develop a bioengineered blood vessel, which Lawson grafted into an artery in a Duke patient’s arm, the first in-human procedure of its kind in the United States.
2015 Clinical trials using PVS-RIPO, a modified polio virus, to activate the host immune system to fight glioblastomas was featured on 60 Minutes. Preliminary findings have reported limited efficacy.
2019 Forty-five faculty members were named as some of the most highly cited researchers on a global list from Clarivate Analytics and Web of Science, placing Duke SOM in a three-way tie as the 8th ranked institution in the nation. These faculty include Robert Leifkowitz, Robert Califf, Jason Locasale, and Darell Bigner.

Rankings and admissions

According to US News and World Report, the Duke University School of Medicine consistently ranks in the top ten medical schools in the United States.
Admission to the school's medical degree program is highly competitive, with more than 7,500 applicants for approximately 115 openings each year. The school ranks very highly among its peers in the diversity of its medical students. Among the draws of the program is its unique curriculum, which gives students contact with patients a year earlier than at most other medical schools and includes an entire year devoted to independent research. Many students use the year to begin studies toward a second degree; nearly one-quarter earn a PhD, Master of Public Health, MBA, JD, or master's degree in addition to an MD. About 19.5 percent are enrolled in Duke's Medical Scientist Training Program, which leads to both an MD and a PhD in health-related basic biomedical or social science research. Created to train highly qualified students as physician-scientists, the Duke program is the fourth oldest in the country, has been continuously funded by the NIH for almost 50 years, and is highly regarded nationally.
Duke University School of Medicine also includes PhD programs in the basic sciences and education and training programs in other health professions, including the top-ranked Physician Assistant and Doctor of Physical Therapy programs, a Primary Care Leadership Track, Master of Biomedical Sciences, MS and PhD in Biostatistics, and Master of Management in Clinical Informatics.

Collaboration with the National University of Singapore

Duke opened a medical school collaboration with the National University of Singapore. The Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School graduated their first class in 2011. The curriculum is similar in structure though the Duke-NUS campus focuses heavily on their team-based learning method called TeamLEAD.

Affiliated research institutions