UC San Diego School of Medicine

The University of California San Diego School of Medicine is the graduate medical school of the University of California, San Diego, a public land-grant research university in La Jolla, California. It was the third medical school in the University of California system, after those established at UCSF and UCLA, and is the only medical school in the San Diego metropolitan area. It is closely affiliated with the medical centers that are part of UC San Diego Health. History In 1962, the fledgling university began searching for a dean to head its planned medical school, which would be the first such institution in San Diego County. The concept was based on the successful models of public medical education and practice in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The man eventually chosen was Joseph Stokes III, an expert in the fields of preventive medicine and cardiovascular epidemiology. Stokes played a key role in aggressively recruiting leading physician scientists of its era and rapidly building the institute's reputation as an elite medical school. Faculty members recruited to the university by Stokes included Y.C. Fung, who would later be considered the father of bioengineering. His efforts were aided by the campus's existing strengths in the biological sciences and close proximity to the famed Salk Institute. The basic science building was the first building constructed on the School of Medicine grounds, which were east of Revelle College and north of New Miramar Road (later renamed La Jolla Village Drive). The first cohort of medical students, 39 men and 8 women, enrolled in 1968, while construction on the clinical science building and adjacent 100-bed Veterans Administration Hospital were still ongoing. The inaugural class in 1971 achieved the highest score in the country on the National Board of Medical Examiners Step 1 Examination, propelling the new school into the national spotlight. The school's first degrees were conferred upon them in 1972. Clinical rotations took place at the UC San Diego Medical Center, then known as Hillcrest County Hospital, which had been constructed by the county in 1963 and leased to the university in 1966. Research and innovation efforts were successful early in the school's history. By 1969, UCSD was a leader in the novel technique of pulmonary thromboendarterectomy. In 1972, faculty members experimented with the use of early echocardiograms.