Associate Editor of The Rheumatologist on Working Sabbatical
Maura Daly Iversen, PT, DPT, SD, MPH, professor and chair of the Department of Physical Therapy, Movement, and Rehabilitation Sciences at Northeastern University, a behavioral scientist in the Division of Rheumatology, Immunology, and Allergy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School, Boston, and associate editor of The Rheumatologist, is spending her sabbatical at the University of North Carolina.
She is working with Joanne Jordan at the Thurston Arthritis Group, which has been following an osteoarthritis cohort for years. Dr. Iversen is performing analysis on the data the group has collected regarding how socio-economic factors affect participation in physical therapy and physical activity.
Benaroya Research Institute Names New President
Jane Buckner, MD, is the new president of the Benaroya Research Institute (BRI) at Virginia Mason in Seattle. She succeeds Gerald Nepom, MD, PhD. Dr. Buckner served as associate director of BRI beginning in 2012. She is also the director of the BRI Translational Research Program, a principal investigator at BRI, rheumatologist at Virginia Mason Medical Center and an affiliate professor at the University of Washington, positions she will continue to hold.
“Dr. Buckner is a trusted colleague and a highly respected translational research investigator who has made significant contributions to the understanding of human autoimmune diseases,” says Gary S. Kaplan, MD, chair and CEO, Virginia Mason Health System.
She says her research is “unique, because my interest is how the immune system failed in many autoimmune diseases, not just rheumatoid arthritis. There is a strong link between rheumatoid arthritis and Type 1 diabetes. Many rheumatoid arthritis patients, and even their family members, have other autoimmune diseases, like multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease and psoriasis, which have been helped by rheumatoid arthritis medications.”
Studying those patients to discover the genetic underpinnings of these diseases leads to learning more about the immune responses in the diseases.
While she continues to see patients one day a week and work with her research group, as president, she says she “will work with the faculty to be sure they have what they need. I have the opportunity to step back and think more broadly. Do we need new technology or new people to make BRI better? All the science should be directed to what’s important to patients. The ultimate goal is to help patients.”
Careful Research Led to New Practice
Kenneth Van Dyke, DO, recently joined the Adena Health System in Chillicothe, Ohio. Dr. Van Dyke graduated from Des Moines University, College of Osteopathic Medicine in Des Moines, Iowa, and did his residency in internal medicine in Ohio and a rheumatology fellowship in New Orleans. He received an ACR Distinguished Fellow Award in 2015.
When it was time to decide where to start practicing, Dr. Van Dyke carefully explored his options. He narrowed the geography down to three states. Then there was the decision whether to go into private practice or work at a university or a hospital. Yet another consideration was if he wanted to work in a rural or urban environment. The ACR job search tool, Career Connection, helped him with research.
More than six months into his private practice with Adena Medical Group, which provides medical care to a rural area in Ohio, he’s quite sure he made all the right decisions. “Working in a multispecialty group is going well,” he says. “The staff are supportive, and that makes the transition [from student to provider] easier than it might have been.”
He goes on to say, “Growing up in a small town myself, I know it’s never the easiest thing to get certain specialties close by. In a way, it’s kind of gratifying to be available for a population that didn’t necessarily have the help they needed before.”
Move Is Lifestyle Change
After almost three decades of practicing medicine in the Chicago suburbs, Mary Moran, MD, has returned to New England.
For four years while a college and med student, Dr. Moran taught sailing with Outward Bound on Hurricane Island in Maine. After her internship, a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in rheumatology at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., she went back to Chicago, where she’d received her medical degree from Rush Medical College, to start her medical practice. She taught at the Chicago Medical School, University of Chicago and Dartmouth Medical School.
Dr. Moran practices general rheumatology. She left private practice at the Center for Arthritis and Osteoporosis of the Illinois Bone and Joint Institute LLC in Morton Grove, Ill., to join the staff of Waldo County General Hospital in Belfast, Maine.
Since her Outward Bound days, “I’ve always, always wanted to come back to Maine,” she says. She and her husband built a vacation house in Maine about 10 years ago. Now they live there year round. There is on a lake, 10 miles from the coast down a mile-long dirt road.
Working as hospital staff is definitely different from private practice. “You’re not as much in charge of your own destiny,” she says. “I plan to work another five to 10 years, because I love what I do.” She’ll spend those five to 10 years with a new balance in her life. She now works three days a week and spends the other four enjoying all that life in northern New England has to offer.
Ann-Marie Lindstrom is an independent writer and editor based in the Tucson, Ariz., area.
