Each year, UC San Diego Health System honors outstanding physicians for their commitment to health care and their service to the community. This year, the Medical Staff Executive Committee – comprised of UC San Diego Health System physicians – selected Thomas J. Savides, MD, professor of clinical medicine in the division of gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, as the 2010 Physician of the Year. Two physicians were named the 2010 House Officers of the Year: Guy Bizek, MD, Emergency Department and Adam Tibble, MD, Anesthesiology Department.
Thomas J. Savides, MD, 2010 Physician of the Year.
Savides is interim chief of the gastroenterology division, as well as GI fellowship training director and GI clinical services chief. He has been on the faculty of UC San Diego since 1993 and was named a “top doctor” by San Diego Magazine in their “Physicians of Exceptional Excellence” survey in 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Savides has an international reputation for his innovative clinical research on novel uses of endoscopy, such as endoscopic ultrasound for lung cancer staging and gastrointestinal and pancreatic cancer diagnosis and staging. With fellow UCSD faculty in the Department of Surgery, he is working on a new research area involving “natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery (NOTES).”
Savides directs a nationally recognized advanced gastrointestinal endoscopy fellowship program at UC San Diego’s Thornton Hospital, for which he is the principle educator for yearlong trainees who have completed a three-year GI fellowship, or visiting scholars observing the program.
“Dr. Savides has again shown his skill as an academic physician and leader of UC San Diego Health System, while continuing to grow our clinical capacity, excellence and standing in the community – in large measure based on his interdisciplinary interactions to develop innovative clinical programs,” said Kenneth Kaushansky, MD, chair, Department of Medicine. “It is in this realm that Dr. Savides truly exemplifies excellence in clinical medicine.”
Bizkek, selected as a 2010 House Officer of the Year, is a chief resident in the Emergency Medicine Residency Program. He has an active interest in rural and international emergency care and has worked in emergency departments in Peru, and Ghana. His research and administrative work during residency focused on therapeutic hypothermia for victims of cardiac arrest and on accidental hypothermia. During his busy residency, he completed two important projects for underserved communities.
Tibble, also selected as a House Officer, is chief resident in the Department of Anesthesiology and is actively involved in research and biomedical product development. He designed two studies of hemodynamic monitoring techniques during major surgeries and is helping with a third. He has personally designed a promising airway device that potentially could have a large impact on the safety of emergency airway management in the operating room as well as in emergency rooms, intensive care units, and the field.
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Media Contact: Leslie Webb, 619-543-6163, L2webb@ucsd.edu