Majority of 'Best Doctors' are members of medical school ohana

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Contact:
Tina Shelton, (808) 692-0897
Director of Communications, Office of Dean of Medicine
Posted: May 29, 2013

Some of Hawai`i's 'Best Doctors' pose with JABSOM Dean Jerris Hedges, front row, right.
Some of Hawai`i's 'Best Doctors' pose with JABSOM Dean Jerris Hedges, front row, right.

Nearly 80% of the physicians identified as Hawai`i’s “Best Doctors” for 2013 are alumni and/or faculty of the UH Mānoa John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM).

The annual “Best Doctors” list is determined by the doctors themselves, through a survey in which physicians are asked, “If you or a loved one needed a doctor in your specialty, to whom would you refer them?”

The Boston-based medical consulting company “Best Doctors, Inc.” compiles the annual list of “America’s Best Doctors." Hawai`i’s list is published by Honolulu Magazine in its June 2013 issue.

In all, 421 of the 8,000 licensed physicians in Hawai`i made the “Best Doctors” list. At least 331 of them (78.4%) are JABSOM ʻohana.

“The significance for Hawai`i," said JABSOM Dean Jerris Hedges, “is that the University of Hawai`i medical school truly is the single most important contributor to the physician workforce in our state. We are also pleased that so many of our alumni and faculty are recognized by their fellow doctors for their dedication to providing high-quality care.”

The medical school, without a University Hospital, spreads its training throughout the State, including at key locations where its faculty are headquartered: Pediatrics and OB-GYN at Kapi`olani Medical Center; Surgery, Medicine and Psychiatry at The Queenʻs Medical Center; Geriatric Medicine at Kuakini Medical Center; and Family Medicine at Wahiawā General Hospital. It has training partnerships with more than 1,000 volunteer faculty located throughout the state and with Kaiser-Permanente and the Veterans Administration. JABSOM and its partners also offer post-MD training of MD Residents and Fellows in 17 different programs.

JABSOM students consistently rank above their peers in the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) Step 1, and by significant margins. For the last eight years in a row, the school’s students have exceeded the national average. The most recent graduating class (JABSOM MD Class of 2013) scored 11 points above the average. Just two weeks ago, JABSOM conferred degrees on 55 of its most recent MD graduates. On July 17, 2013, a new first-year class of 66 students will enter the school, joining the second-, third- and fourth-year students whose medical training continues in classrooms and in clinical wards of hospitals and health centers around the state.

The USMLE Step 1 is a national examination that all U.S. medical students must pass at the completion of their second year of study, before they are permitted to proceed to clinical training at the bedsides of patients.

About 90 percent of the students admitted into JABSOM are Hawai`i residents. “Best Doctors, Inc.," a medical consulting company founded by physicians affiliated with the Harvard Medical School, compiles the annual list of “America’s Best Doctors."

For more information, visit: http://jabsom.hawaii.edu