Dozens of medical students and residents from Japanese medical institutions have participated in the Pathology International Education (PIE) exchange program, thanks to an agreement established in 2001 and facilitated by Professor of Pathology Matt Kida, M.D. Several times each year, UVM students go to Japan and students and residents from Japan come to UVM as part of this reciprocal education and research initiative. On Monday, September 29, 2014, leaders from Kansai Medical University in Osaka, Japan – one of three medical schools participating in the PIE program – visited with a wide range of leaders and practitioners and toured facilities at the University and teaching hospital Fletcher Allen Health Care.

The special guests from Kansai Medical University included Toshio Yamashita, M.D., president and chair of the board of directors, Koichi Tomoda, M.D., vice president, director of school affairs and professor and chair of head and neck surgery, and Shosaku Nomura, M.D., chair of the clinical education committee and professor and chair of medicine. The group’s visit commenced with a meeting with UVM President Thomas Sullivan, J.D., followed by visits with Professor and Chair of Pathology Debra Leonard, M.D., Ph.D., several medical education leaders, including William Jeffries, Ph.D., senior associate dean for medical education, College of Medicine Dean Frederick C. Morin III, M.D., and Interim Senior Associate Dean for Research Russell Tracy, Ph.D. The group then toured the College of Medicine’s classrooms, lecture halls and the UVM/Fletcher Allen Clinical Simulation Laboratory, before the visit’s concluding tour of the hospital.

In 2012, Dean Morin and his wife, Tracy, visited Kansai Medical University, where they met with Yamashita and Tomoda and toured the institution’s facilities, which serve roughly twice the population of UVM/Fletcher Allen.

To date, the PIE program has hosted more than 40 students and residents from Kansai, Tottori University Faculty of Medicine, Kawasaki Medical School, and Kanazawa Medical University in Japan. Learn more about the program here.