David J. Murray, M.D., has been named the Carol B. and Jerome T. Loeb Professor.
“We are grateful to Carol Loeb and her late husband, Jerry, for establishing both an endowed professorship and a teaching fellows program,” Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton said. “Their commitment to training and clinical excellence will greatly enhance our education efforts at the School of Medicine.”
“This professorship recognizes David Murray for his extraordinary clinical and medical skills,” said Larry J. Shapiro, M.D., executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine. “Clinical simulation has become an integral part of medical education, and we are very fortunate to have a national leader in the field directing those efforts at the School of Medicine.”
Murray is a pediatric anesthesiologist and director of the Clinical Simulation Center, a joint effort involving the medical school and its departments of Anesthesiology, Pediatrics and Surgery, as well as BJC HealthCare.
Murray came to the University and St. Louis Children’s Hospital in 1995 from the University of Iowa Hospitals and College of Medicine. He and his colleagues at Washington University have been using simulators to help assess and improve physician competence for more than a decade, and most of his current research involves using simulation technology to improve communication among members of medical teams with the goal of providing better diagnosis and treatment.
According to Alex S. Evers, M.D., the Henry Elliot Mallinckrodt Professor and head of the Department of Anesthesiology, the Loeb Professorship will provide needed support for the department’s efforts to take advantage of clinical simulation technologies to train young physicians.
In the Simulation Center, those students and residents are placed into simulated scenarios that give them experience dealing with complicated or unusual situations that they may face in clinical practice.
Jerome Loeb was former chairman of The May Department Stores Co. He joined the company’s Famous-Barr division in 1964 and held several positions both at the corporate office and at Hecht’s, a department store based in Washington D.C. In 1981, he was named executive vice president and chief financial officer for the company, was elected to the board of directors in 1984, was promoted to president in 1993 and was named chairman in 1998. He retired from the company in 2001 and died in 2004.
Carol Loeb earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and French from Mount Holyoke College in 1963. She became a mathematics teacher and tutor and served on the Members’ Board of the Missouri Botanical Garden. She also serves on the board of trustees at the Saint Louis Science Center, where she and her husband established the Loeb Prize, which provides annual cash prizes to excellent mathematics and science teachers in the St. Louis area.
In addition to the professorship, the Loebs set up the Carol B. and Jerome T. Loeb Teaching Fellows Program, which appoints fellows to two-year terms to focus extra time on teaching medical students and residents.
When the fellowship program was initiated in 2004, the Barnes-Jewish Hospital Foundation recognized the Loebs’ generosity with its own gift to provide for two additional teaching fellowships.
Currently, the Loeb Teaching Fellows for the medical school are Mary E. Klingensmith, M.D., associate professor of surgery and director of the residency program in general surgery, and Martin I. Boyer, M.D., associate professor of orthopaedic surgery and director of third- and fourth-year musculoskeletal education.
The Barnes-Jewish Hospital Teaching Fellows are Jane Loitman, M.D., assistant professor of clinical neurology and director of the Palliative Care Service; and Elliot Efrem Abbey, M.D., professor of clinical medicine in medical oncology.