The Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Faculty of Medicine in Bogotá, Colombia is one of the leading medical schools in Colombia and Latin America. Its structure lies within the campus of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and most practice takes place at its university hospital, the Hospital Universitario San Ignacio (HUSI). In the past 75 years the faculty has been home to many remarkable Colombian physicians and scientists known locally and internationally.
History
In 1942 the faculty start working in a building of San Bartolomé Mayor school. In 1952 the Hospital Universitario San Ignacio (HUSI) was under construction, in the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana campus, and eventually the faculty office was moved there.
Deans and administrative structure
The administrative structure of the faculty is structured into many dependencies, responding to the university's Academic and University Medium directives.
The faculty of medicine- as every other faculty in the university- runs a dual deanship structure, allowing for an academic dean to handle issues regarding the academic structure (curriculum, medical staff, hospital liaisons), and a University medium dean to handle issues of clinical and social ethics, student and staff welfare, among others.
Current deans are:
Academic: Carlos Gómez-Restrepo, MD. Professor in Psychiatry. Member of the board of the university hospital.
Further along, the structure relies on the undergraduate programme director and an academic secretary (Martha Delgado, MD and Martha L. Rocha, respectively); a residency and fellowship programmes director (Efraim Leal, MD); and the respective department heads (see below).
Departments, institutes and centres
The clinical sciences departments at the faculty are:
Anaesthesiology (department head: Reinaldo Grueso, MD) Surgery (department head: Mauricio Pelaez, MD) Clinical epidemiology and biostatistics (department head: Carlos Gómez, MD) Ob/Gyn (department head: Jaime Silva, MD) Preventive medicine (interim department head: Amelia Fernández, MD) Internal Medicine (department head: W. Ricardo Bohórquez, MD) Neurosciences (department head: Luis Alfonso Zarco Montero, MD, MSc.) Orthopaedics and traumatology (department head: Luis Fernando Useche, MD) Paediatrics (department head: Alberto Martínez, MD) Pathology (department head: Luis Fernando Jaramillo, MD) Psychiatry (department head: José Miguel Uribe Restrepo, MD, MSc.) Radiology (department head: Luis F Uriza, MD)
Institutes at the faculty of medicine include:
Institute of Human Genetics (director: Ignacio Zarante, MD), home to important genetics research in Latin America, including the well-known 'Expedición Humana' project years 1983-1997. Institute of health promotion (director: Amelia Fernández, MD) Institute of ageing Centro Javeriano de Oncología - CJO (director: Francisco J. Henao, MD), state-of-the-art oncologic therapy and diagnostics centre. Clinical simulation centre
Other departments include:
Physiological sciences (department head: Maria José Fernández, MD, Pulmonologist, MSc.), which handles physiological sciences as well as pharmacological sciences. Morphology (department head: Angelika Kuhlmann Lüdeke, MD, MSc.), which handles anatomy, histology and embryology. For this purpose it is gifted with labs and an amphitheatre with a tables for 12 corpses.
Curriculum
The faculty's programme is focused on the students' interaction with its medium on each different semester. The objective is to allow a theoretical learning based on 'magistral' lessons that can thereon be followed up by more intimate tutoring by doctors, residents and interns, as well as a practise, which can be at the laboratory, at the amphitheatre or at the hospital.
Grosso modo, the curriculum is divided into twelve semesters, the first ten of which is the basic preparation, and the last two are the internship practise.
The programme is divided in a 'basic sciences' bloc and a 'clinical sciences', bloc, which in turn also has a subdivision of 'surgical sciences'.