San Juan Bautista School of Medicine

The San Juan Bautista School of Medicine &mdash;or Escuela de Medicina San Juan Bautista in Spanish&mdash; is a medical school located within the San Juan Bautista Medical Center in Caguas, Puerto Rico. The school offers studies in general practice, internal medicine, pediatrics, primary care, and psychiatry. The school has a four-year M.D. program and five-year M.D. program. The faculty include experienced medical doctors and professors that integrate knowledge with practice. At the hospital, different specialists and sub-specialists offer their community services and teaching to the students.

History
The San Juan Bautista School of Medicine (SJB) was founded in 1978 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It's a non profit corporation, incorporated under the laws of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. On June 22 of 1979, it was authorized by the Council of Higher Education of Puerto Rico to offer studies pertinent to the M.D. degree. The Council of Higher Education of Puerto Rico is the governmental agency with the responsibility to coordinate the efforts related to the higher education in Puerto Rico.

The Institution has continued to develop through the years, and it moved its facilities to the city of Caguas in 1988, one of the most important urban centers in Puerto Rico. Nearly 150,000 people live in this progressive city of Puerto Rico. Caguas is located in the East-Central region of the island, 18 mi south of San Juan the Capital City of Puerto Rico. Due to the short distance between Caguas and San Juan, it is accessible to ports and airport facilities, thus permitting the fast movement of people and merchandise. This element facilitates commercial, industrial and tourism expansion activities. The commercial development effect of urban growth during the last twenty years has allowed the construction of shopping centers with modern amenities and installations. Around the periphery of the city, arise modern, recreational, sports and cultural facilities which have been developed in recent years.

On February 1998, the Middle States Association (MSA), granted Candidacy for Accreditation Status to the School. The self-study design was accepted and the School was authorized to start its self-study process in April 2001. Thanks to this Candidacy, San Juan Bautista School of Medicine was certified on November 1998 to participate in the Title IV Program of the Department of Federal Education, specifically in the Federal Family Education Loan program. Through the Puerto Rico Health Reform, there was the opportunity of buying hospitals from the government. The School of Medicine saw the possibility of growth and presented a proposal to buy Caguas' Regional Hospital, Dr. Eduardo Garrido Morales, and on July 1, 1999 took control over its operations under the name of San Juan Bautista Medical Center. On June 2004, San Juan Bautista School of Medicine is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. The Commission on Higher Education is an institutional accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education and the Council for the Higher Education Accreditation. The school is also member of the Board of Medical Examiners of Puerto Rico. On November 2006, San Juan Bautista School of Medicine received the LCME team visit as a final step in the program accreditation process. As part of the accreditation procedure, a process of reconsideration was held with a final decision of accreditation by the LCME, on June 15, 2007. This made San Juan Bautista the fourth LCME accredited medical school in Puerto Rico. During the year 2006, the Government of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and its Legislative Assembly approved the act that creates the Regional Academic Medical Centers. This act establish that the four medical schools in Puerto Rico will lead and coordinates the health services of a determined area of the island under an environment of health education and the integration of the community in the academic development of the medical students interns and residents. The San Juan Bautista School of Medicine and its hospital the San Juan Bautista Medical Center, is part of these Academic Medical Center, serving the Central Region of Puerto Rico. (Regional Academic Medical Centers of Puerto Rico Act: Act 136 of 2006)

Up to June 30, 2006, Escuela de Medicina San Juan Bautista has graduated a total of 825 medical doctors that have been integrated successfully to provide health care in Puerto Rico and abroad.

Licenses and Accreditations

 * Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME)
 * Council on Higher Education of Puerto Rico (CHE-PR)
 * Middle States Commission on Higher Education
 * Board of Medical Examiners of Puerto Rico
 * Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO)

Mission and Vision
The Institution is committed to providing high quality medical education, service, and research that will foster students’ comprehensive development, so that they can become capable, competent, skilled and honest professionals. The students will be prepared and qualified to go beyond the challenges brought forth by new knowledge and new technology in the fields of health services and medical education, in accordance to accrediting agencies and the integration of science and medical education. The school’s endeavor is to excel, as a private academic health center, in the preparation of primary care physicians focusing on community-based, humanistic medicine. Respect, honesty, compassion, and empathy are attributes that should characterize San Juan Bautista alumni.

Goals and Objectives
1. Offer and maintain an interdisciplinary, updated primary care medical education program of a moral, humanistic, community-based and ethical nature with high academic and scientific standards.

2. Focus the medical education curriculum on professionalism and humanistic community-based medicine, within a continuous and coordinated framework for patient care.

3. Create an academic community-based medical education environment that is conducive to academic freedom and commitment to excellence, where medical students, faculty, and support personnel are motivated to learn, teach, and collaborate.

4. Provide medical students with research experiences in the basic sciences and also related to community-based and primary care medicine.

5. Operate as an academic health services' center that promotes active community participation. 6. Provide an adequate distribution of resources and a solid financial basis to support the medical education program.

7. Develop and maintain an outcomes-assessment program, at both the institutional and academic levels, that promotes continuous quality improvement.

8. Increase the use of technology in the teaching and learning processes, administrative procedures and in the provision and administration of health services.

9. Strength and integrate the planning processes in decision-making and institutional development.

Location and Facilities
The School facilities are located on the spacious grounds of the San Juan Bautista Medical Center, previously known as the Dr. Eduardo Garrido Morales Caguas Regional Hospital; between State Highways 52 and 172 in an urban development known as Turabo Gardens. This is a tertiary hospital facility constructed in a 25 acre ground. The 52 acres hold the Hospital and the School, which houses the administrative offices, the the basic sciences dependencies of the medical school; the administrative offices, basic sciences faculty offices, Library/Learning Resources Center, teaching and research laboratories, development clinical skills program infrastructure (e.g. standardized patient), and community-based medicine offices. Also, it provides space for student council organizations as well as meeting room for the students, basketball court, and at the medical center, the cafeteria and gymnasium. An experimental surgery facility is located in an adjacent structure. The San Juan Bautista Medical Center has approximately 481527 sqft of construction, and has 375 approved beds for hospitalisation, with the following clinical departments: Emergency Medicine, Radiology, Ob/Gyn, Internal Medicine, Surgery, Paediatrics, Psychiatry, Anesthesiology, Primary Medicine and Clinical and Pathology labs. Primary, secondary and tertiary health care services are provided to the Caguas Health Region which encompasses 13 surrounding towns and cities.

The San Juan Bautista Medical Center is the principal clinical training facility for third and fourth year students of San Juan Bautista Medical Center who complete clerkships in each of the following disciplines: Internal Medicine, Surgery, Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Psychiatry, Family Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Radiology, Anesthesiology and Subspecialties. Likewise, many students do clinical electives at this center. Clinical training at the San Juan Bautista Medical Center brings the student into contact with a patient population drawn from many different socio-economic groups whose health problems represent all categories of medical conditions requiring complex tertiary care to routine and preventive care. It offers possibilities for experience in public practice outreach clinics and rural medicine, through the Community Medicine approach.

San Juan Bautista Medical Center
The San Juan Bautista Medical Center (SJBMC) has been part of the San Juan Bautista School of Medicine since 1999. The Institution is recognized for taking the lead in educating primay care physicians, and had demostrated a strong commitment to the community. The San Juan Bautista Medical Center is acredited by Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO). The Hospital is recognized as a non profit organization by the Treasury Department of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and by the Internal Revenue Services of the United States of America. The actual hospital departments are: Anesthesiology, Clinical Sciences Associate, Cardiovascular Laboratory, Emergency Medicine, Epidemiology, Gynecolgy and Obstetrics, Internal Medicine, Neonatology, Orthopedic Surgery, Outpatient Service, Pathology, Pediatric and Pediatric Intensive Care, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Radiology, General and Ambulatory Surgery.

Mailing Address:

San Juan Bautista School of Medicine,

P.O. Box 4968,

Caguas, PR 00726-4968

Physical Address:

Luis A. Ferre Highway, Exit #21,

Road 172 Caguas to Cidra,

Turabo Gardens,

Caguas PR, 00726

Telephone: (787) 743-3038

Fax: (787) 746-3093

Notable Faculty

 * Yocasta Brugal-Mena, MD - Clinical Pathologist, Former Deputy Director of Institute of Forensic Medicine of Puerto Rico
 * Walmor De Mello, MD, Ph.D - Cardiologist and Physiologist
 * Luis Izquierdo Mora, MD - Family Medicine Physician, Former Puerto Rico Secretary of Health, Wonca Global Family Doctor of the Month (February 2006 Award)
 * Aida Lugo Somolinos, MD - Dermatologist
 * Luis Mejia Rivera, MD, Ph.D - Internal Medicine Physician and Psycho-pharmacologist
 * Edwin Rodriguez Cruz, MD - Pediatric Cardiologist
 * Jesus Saavedra Caballero, MD - Child and Adolescents Psychiatrist
 * Alberto Santiago-Cornier, MD, Ph.D - Pediatric Geneticist and Medical Researcher