THE FRUITS OF DENIAL: UTMB OPHTHALMOLOGY AND PEDIATRICS

The Blogmeister, not so long ago, went 'round and 'round with UTMB administration over Ophthalmology's treatment of a couple of faculty members.  These people met with a solid wall of denial for the most part.  The problem with denial, however, is that those doing the denying don't do anything to fix the problem, either.  So let's see how well it works.  Let's look at the latest YouCount! survey and see how Ophthalmology has fared over the past year.  Click the link below to see the largest differences between this year's survey and last year's for Ophthalmology:

Download oph_diff_2007.pdf 

The quality of medical care, as assessed by the department's own people, fell 27 points in one year, and employee motivation is just over half of what it was last year. I hear that resident matches really stink this year, too. Oh, and did I mention that the department's only researcher with an RO1 NIH award is leaving after having arrived only a couple of years ago?  

The captain can either admit the ship is sinking and start bailing, or he can tell everyone nothing is wrong right up until the ship goes under.  So far, UTMB appears to prefer the latter in this case.

Now, why dredge this up?  Because history is repeating itself.  The Blogmeister has locked horns with UTMB administration over big problems in Pediatrics.  Again, administration is issuing its denials.  Now, I don't have Pediatrics' YouCount! 2008 surveys yet.  I got Ophthalmology's on-line, but neither I nor some people I asked to try could open the link on the UTMB site for Pediatrics' report.  Ok.  It's coming via my Public Info request anyway.  Once I get it, I'll have my baseline, and then we'll see if Pediatrics goes the way of Ophthalmology or if management will be smart enough to act this time.

Any bets? 

Comments

UTMB's ophthalmology department has a long history of suboptimal performance: after one chair had to leave overnight (no reason was ever given, but rumors had it that there were some gross irregularities), the eye department was run for years by a urologist (!), only to be replaced by a new chair who was finally hired from UCLA and lasted a record time of 6 weeks (!). And now this chair, whose achievements are well documented in this YouCount document.

The relevant question is: are Anderson and Callender aware of this, or are they simply decorated with titles and blessed with huge salaries, while being clueless and indifferent to the needs of UTMB?

The Ophthalmology departments only NIH funded faculty just resigned, unhappy with the state of affairs

Is this the basic scientist that they got from Europe to do research on their much publicized AMD?

[Blogmeister comment: I'm not sure about "AMD," (age-related macular degeneration?) but he's from Wales, as I recall.]

Wow, that's amazing!
Bernard F. Godley, the disputed chair of ophthalmology, who has a very meager publication track record (see PubMed: 21 publications in 23 years!), launched a huge PR campaign when he recently recruited Dr. Boulton from Wales. And now: as so often with UTMB, this initiative turned out to be a waste of money and resources. It is high time for Callender and Anderson to focus their attention on the weakest part in this university: the non-functioning chairs.